Within Group Heterogeneity Among Pacific Island Elders in the United States.

From a demographic perspective, the lives of Pacific Island elders in the United States remain largely unexplored. This knowledge gap is the result of a number of factors including the small size of the Pacific Island population, the historic inability on the part of government statistical agencies to collect small population statistics and the fluid nature of Pacific Island self identification. All of these factors have worked together to limit our understanding of this small, though rapidly growing component of the US population. This paper uses data from the 2000 Census of Population to examine this understuudied population. The paper illistrates how Pacific Islanders differ from Asian Americans and how the internal differences in the cultural perceptions of different Pacific Island populations impact their lives in the United States [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]