The ethnographer Michael Izady does not make a Tajik specific distinction and defines Parsiwans as "urbanites of any ethnic background who speak only Persian and have lost all their ethnic and tribal affiliations." In his 2013 study he found that 4.2% of Afghanistan's population were Parsiwans and that the group were historically the most likely ethnic group to be employed in the government as bureaucrats and that "most of what people in the West know about Afghanistan has come to them through these three Persian-speaking minorities Kizilbash and Parsiwans."