The XX-factor

IF BRITONS suffered after the 2008 financial crash, ethnic minorities suffered most. Their earnings slipped further and their household incomes fell faster than those of whites. For two groups, however—Pakistani and Bangladeshi Britons—things got better. Household incomes went up and earnings increased (see chart), while Bangladeshi children have most improved their circumstances. Both groups have long lagged behind other Britons. Why are they catching up now?

The answer is that women from these communities have entered the workforce, and they have done so in droves. Until recently, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis had the smallest proportion of women in work: just 31% of Pakistani women and 21% of Bangladeshi women were involved in the labour market between 2001 and 2005, in contrast to 77% of white British women. Since 2008 the proportion of Bangladeshi women in work has jumped by 13 percentage points (even as the number of working Bangladeshi men has fallen), and the proportion of Pakistani women has risen by almost five percentage points. This has happened even as the share of black women in work has gone down.

This is partly a story of delayed integration. Having arrived in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly from rural communities, Asian Muslims are belatedly shaking off traditions that kept women at home. Other groups settled in faster: Indian Sikhs, who reached Britain’s shores at roughly the same time and from similar backgrounds, quickly leapt ahead of them on nearly every measure.

Pakistanis’ and Bangladeshis’ recent gains mark the end of a long wait for the British-born generation to grow up. Women of working age are, at last, well-educated—especially Bangladeshis who, clustered in London where schools have improved most, now do better than their white equivalents. There have been knock-on effects: with daughters at school and at university, “housewives start thinking about brushing up their English”, says Amina Chowdhury, who manages Birmingham’s Bangladesh Women’s Association. Improvements in Bangladesh have contributed: thanks partly to a government birth-control programme, female migrants are more highly qualified than they used to be.

The strong social ties that have sometimes held Pakistani and Bangladeshi women back may also be a hidden strength. If community bonds are weak, immigrants are vulnerable to the bumps and bruises involved in settling in, which can set them back, believes David Goodhart of Demos, a think-tank. Afro-Caribbeans, who came to Britain eager to integrate, have settled somewhere at the bottom of working-class culture, he has said. Asian Muslims’ stronger community ties can be stifling—but the latest evidence suggests they also provide a cushion.