Island paradox: Puerto Rico in the 1990s

Abstract

The information presented in this volume is based largely on U.S. census data primarily from the 1970 1980 and 1990 censuses of population and housing....[It] focuses on the demographic and social changes that occurred in Puerto Rico during the decade of the 1980s and the early 1990s when the sustained decline of a series of socioeconomic indicators reached alarming levels. A disturbing rise in the unemployment rate high poverty rates sustained social inequities and a sharp increase in substance abuse and crime were characteristics of the period. These transformations and their policy implications can only be understood in their historical context. There are chapters on population growth and demographic changes migration between Puerto Rico and the United States immigration and the population born outside Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican population in the United States. (EXCERPT)