Statistics showing Native Hawaiians faring more poorly than non-Hawaiians economically are skewed because a larger percentage of Native Hawaiians are people under 18 and therefore are much less likely to earn an income, according to a study released yesterday by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.

A key supporter of Hawaiians-only programs, however, took issue with the results.

The study by Harry Messenheimer, the institute's research director, goes on to say that the difference between the average earnings of the median non-native wage-earner and a native wage-earner are not as significant "when adjusting for age and education differences."

"This report gives further support to our stance that benefits based on race are not only inconsistent with the idea of equal rights but are not warranted based on the available data," said Jamie Story, the organization's president.

"Native Hawaiians do just as well as everybody else, there's nothing to worry about," Messenheimer said. "All they have to do is take advantage of their opportunities and when they do so, they do just as well as anybody else. They're not downtrodden in any way that I can find with respect to these measures of poverty and income."

Messenheimer, an economist, said numbers he extrapolated from the 2006 American Community Survey show Native Hawaiians in Hawai'i have a poverty rate of 12.2 percent, while non-Hawaiians have a poverty rate of 8.6 percent.

Such numbers are skewed, he said, because a much larger percentage of Native Hawaiians are under 18, and therefore less likely to work, than non-Hawaiians. About 35.8 percent of Native Hawaiians are under 18, while 19.8 percent of non-Hawaiians are 17 and under, he said.

"When you don't have people earning income, they're not going to contribute to the overall income pie by which poverty calculations are computed by the government," Messenheimer said. Non-native workers tend to have about one year more education than Native Hawaiians on average, Messenheimer said. They also tend to be older by about two years. More education and work experience would tend to mean higher income.

Non-natives, by extrapolation, would be expected to have 8 percent to 12 percent higher income than Native Hawaiians, he said. Instead, "it's a little less than 8 percent, so natives are actually doing a little bit better than we would expect based on their skills."

Shawn Malia Kana'iaupuni, who heads the research arm for Kamehameha Schools, called the Grassroot Institute's study confusing and flawed. The school's research has been used in arguing for Hawaiians-only programs.

Kana'iaupuni said Kamehameha's own research shows that when adjusting for age issues, Native Hawaiians "remain at a higher risk in terms of some primary indicators of well-being, including income."

She noted that Messenheimer "makes the case that (Native Hawaiians) have less education, lower earning power, more heads per household, and more single-female-headed families — all these are standard determinants of poverty in the social science research literature, but then the article says that this means they are not really in poverty?"

Kana'iaupuni also questioned Messenheimer's use of American Community Survey data, noting that the population sizes for the survey are much smaller samplings than the once-per-decade U.S. Census studies.