About one in seven older Asian Americans lives in poverty, and if not for Social Security, that number would climb to one in three, the report by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, concluded.

Among Asian Americans receiving Social Security, more than one in four married couples (29 percent) and more than one in two single people (60 percent) depend on it for virtually all their income, the report found. The annual median income for older Asian American households was $16,757, less than the median $26,177 for older white households.

Titled "Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Social Security: A Primer,” the report is also available in Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese.

The report is the second of three commissioned by AARP to study Social Security’s impact on minority groups. The first focuses on African Americans, and the third, still pending, will examine Hispanics.

This latest study offers a snapshot of how critical a role Social Security has taken on for elderly Asian Americans as well as Pacific Islanders, many of whom are from Hawaii.

Social Security and its annual cost-of-living adjustments are particularly important to Asian American beneficiaries, the study said, because their life expectancies are generally longer than those of Americans as a whole.

According to the Social Security Administration, Asian American and Pacific Islander men who were age 65 in 2010 were expected to live on average to age 85; women's life expectancy is 88. That's three years longer than predicted for all men and women in the United States.

For older Asian American women, Social Security income kept 17 percent out of poverty. Still, their poverty rate of 13 percent exceeded the 10 percent rate for older white women, the report found.

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