Demographics of Puerto Rico

This article is about the demographic features of the population of Puerto Rico, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.

Demographics of Puerto Rico
Population Change Timeline
Population Density
Population	3,927,776
Male population	1,887,087
Female population	2,040,689
Population growth	0.47%
Birth rate	13.93/1,000
Death rate	7.86/1,000
Infant mortality rate	8.24/1,000
Life expectancy	78.29 years
Nationality	Puerto Rican
Demographic bureaus	2000, United States Census

The population of Puerto Rico has been shaped by Amerindian settlement, European colonization, slavery, economic migration, and Puerto Rico's status as a United States Commonwealth.

History of migration

The inhabitants of Puerto Rico immediately before the first European contact were part of the Arawak group of Native Americans (also known as American Indians due to some historical confusion). They called themselves Boriquen (alt. Borikén, Borinquén, Boricuas) and were named by Christopher Columbus in 1493 as the Taíno, along with the inhabitants of other nearby islands. (The Taíno had replaced the original human culture on the island, the Ortoiroid.)

Immigration

Immigration to Puerto Rico

The Spanish conquered the island, assuming government in 1508, colonized it, and enslaved the natives. Taíno numbers dwindled due to disease, warfare, and forced labor, and the Spanish began importing large numbers of slaves from Africa. Spanish men arrived on the island disproportionately to Spanish women; Taíno women were sometimes forced to marry them, resulting in a mestizo, or "mixed" ethnicity. Some women used marriage to white men to improve their social status; "cleanliness of blood" documents were used on the island until the 1870s.^{[citation needed]}

During the 1800s, hundreds of Corsican, French, Lebanese, Chinese, Maltese and Portuguese families, along with large numbers of immigrants from Spain (mainly from Catalonia, Asturias, Galicia, the Balearic Islands, Andalusia, and the Canary Islands) and numerous Spanish loyalists from Spain's former colonies in South America, arrived in Puerto Rico (See Spanish immigration to Puerto Rico). Other settlers have included Irish, Scots, Germans, Italians, Greeks and thousands of others (i.e. Christian Arabs who may or not be Catholics) who were granted land from Spain during the Real Cedula de Gracias de 1815 (Royal Decree of Graces of 1815), which allowed European Catholics to settle in the island with a certain amount of free land and enslaved persons. This mass immigration during the 19th century helped the population grow from 155,000 in 1800 to almost a million at the close of the century. During the early 20th century Jews began to settle in Puerto Rico. The first large group of Jews to settle in Puerto Rico were European refugees fleeing German–occupied Europe in the 1930s. Puerto Rico's economic boom of the 1950s attracted a considerable number of Jewish families from the U.S. mainland, who were joined after 1959 by an influx of Jewish emigres from Castro's Cuba.^[1]

In recent years, over 100,000 legal immigrants from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Venezuela, have also settled in Puerto Rico, but together they represent less than 5% of the population.^{[citation needed]}

Royal Decree of Graces, 1815

Emigration

Emigration has been a major part of Puerto Rico's recent history as well. Starting in the post-World War II period, due to poverty, cheap airfares, their U.S. citizenship, and promotion by the island government, waves of Puerto Ricans moved to the continental United States, particularly to New York City; Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, and Camden, New Jersey; Chicago; Providence, Rhode Island; Springfield and Boston, Massachusetts; Orlando, Miami and Tampa, Florida; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Hartford, Connecticut; Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, California. This continued even as Puerto Rico's economy improved and its birth rate declined. Emigration continues at the present time, and this, combined with Puerto Rico's slumping below-replacement birth rate (fertility in 2006 was recorded at just under 1.70 children per woman [1], about the same as Vermont's in that year, and the number of births has continued to tumble since [2]), suggests that the island's population will age rapidly and start to decline sometime within the next couple of decades.

The word Nuyorican is sometimes used to describe Puerto Rican New Yorkers. The Spanish word for "Puerto Rican" is puertorriqueño.

Race and ethnic groups

Racial demographic history

The first census by the United States in 1899 reported a population of 953,243 inhabitants, 61.8% of them classified as white, 31.9% as mixed, and 6.3% as black.

A strong European immigration wave and large importation of slaves from Africa helped increase the population of Puerto Rico over thirteenfold during the 19th century, no doubt significantly diluting the Native American portion of the Puerto Rican gene pool. No major immigration wave occurred during the 20th century. ^[4]

The federal Naturalization Act, signed into law on March 26, 1790, by President Washington, explicitly barred anyone not of the White "race" from applying for U.S. citizenship. This law remained in effect until the 1950s, although its enforcement was tightened in the late nineteenth century regarding Asian immigrants, and by the Johnson-Reed act of 1924 imposing immigration quotas. In short, until late in the twentieth century, only immigrants of the White "race" could hope to become naturalized citizens. This is how Puerto Rico came about being forced to become U.S citizens in 1917.^[5][6]

Until 1950 the U.S. Bureau of the Census attempted to quantify the racial composition of the island's population, while experimenting with various racial taxonomies. In 1960 the census dropped the racial identification question for Puerto Rico but included it again in the year 2000. The only category that remained constant over time was white, even as other racial labels shifted greatly—from "colored" to "Black", "mulatto" and "other". Regardless of the precise terminology, the census reported that the bulk of the Puerto Rican population was white from 1899 to 2000.^[3]

An interesting anecdote to consider was that during this whole period, Puerto Rico had laws like the Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar where a person of mixed ancestry could be considered legally white so long as they could prove that at least one person per generation in the last four generations had also been legally white. Therefore people of mixed ancestry with known white lineage were classified as white.^[7][8]

According to the 1920 Puerto Rican census, 2,505 individuals immigrated to Puerto Rico between 1910 and 1920. Of these, 2,270 were classified as "white" in the 1920 census (1,205 from Spain), (280 from Venezuela), (180 from Cuba), & (135 from the Dominican Republic). Although, in the same decade 7873 Puerto Ricans emigrated to the U.S, out of these 6561 were "white" on the U.S mainland census, 909 as "Spanish white" and 403 as "black".^[9]

The statistics show Puerto Rican's responses to the 2000/census, asking which race(s) they identify with. (The U.S. Census does not consider Hispanic a race, and asks if a person considers himself Hispanic in a separate question.) Although, the term "Hispanic" specifically refers to a person residing in the United States or Latin America of Spanish descent.

Genetic studies

A recent study of Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 800 individuals found 61.1% as having Amerindian maternal mtDNA, 26.4% as having African maternal mtDNA, and 12.5% as having Caucasian maternal mtDNA.^[15] Conversely, patrilineal input, as indicated by the Y chromosome, showed that 70% of all Puerto Rican males have inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male European ancestor, 20% have inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male African ancestor, and fewer than 10% have inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male Amerindian ancestor.

Dr. Juan Martinez Cruzado, a geneticist from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez who participated in the design of the mDNA study, said accounts of life on Puerto Rico in the 1600 and 1700s "describe many aspects that are totally derived from Taino modus vivendi, not just the hammocks but the way they fished, their methods of farming, etc....It is clear that the influence of Taino culture was very strong up to about 200 years ago. If we could conduct this same study on the Puerto Ricans from those times, the figure would show that 80 percent of the people had Indian heritage."

Conversely, in a study done on Puerto Rican women born on the island but living in NY by Carolina Bonilla, Mark D. Shriver and Esteban Parra in 2004, the ancestry proportions corresponding to the three parental populations were found to be 53.3±2.8% European, 29.1±2.3% West African, and 17.6±2.4% Native American based on autosomal ancestry informative markers. Autosomal markers tests have been shown to draw a larger picture than that of gender based mtDNA and Y-Chromosome tests. More interesting was to see how much of the population showed any markers of each region. 98% of the people sampled had European ancestry markers, 87% had African ancestry markers, 84% had Native American ancestry markers, 5% showed only African and European markers, 4% showed only Native American and European markers, 2% showed only African markers, and 2% showed only European markers.^[16]

Religion

Christians

Religious breakdown in Puerto Rico (2006)^[17]:

Roman Catholics

The Roman Catholic Church has been historically the most dominant religion of the majority of Puerto Ricans, with Puerto Rico having the first dioceses in the Americas.^[18]

Protestants

The presence of various Protestant denominations has increased under American sovereignty, making modern Puerto Rico an interconfessional country. Protestantism was suppressed under the Spanish regime, but encouraged under American rule of the island. An example of this was with the Holy Trinity Anglican church in Ponce, which was prevented from ringing its bell until 1898, when American troops landed there^[19].

Muslims

Christian Denominational Breakdown (2006)^[20]:

In 2007, there were over 5,000 Muslims in Puerto Rico, representing about 0.13% of the population^[21][22]. There are eight Islamic mosques spread throughout the island, with most Muslims living in Río Piedras^[23][24]. Puerto Rican converts to Islam continues to occur^[25]. "Ties between Latinos and Islam are more than just spiritual, but date back to Spanish history. Many people do not realize that Muslims ruled Spain for more than 700 years"^[26]. And at times not just individuals, but whole families convert. However, lack of Muslim education in the Island forces some Puerto Rican Muslims to migrate to the States^[26]. Many Latino Muslims who claim Islamic roots point out that Islam's influence on Latin America is not new. They point to the African/Islamic influence evident in Spanish literature, music and thought. Thousands of Spanish words, for example, are derived from Arabic. In Latino culture, especially language, there are lots of Arabisms^[27]. Islam was brought into Puerto Rico mainly via the Palestinian migration of the 1950s and '60s^[28]. Thus, today there is a strong Palestinian presence among Muslims in Puerto Rico. "They are economically strong and are thus able to pay for a full time Imaam"^[29].

Jews

Puerto Rico is also home to the largest and richest Jewish community in the Caribbean with 3,000 Jewish inhabitants. Some Puerto Ricans have converted, not only as individuals but as entire families. Puerto Rico is the only Caribbean island in which the Conservative, Reform and Orthodox Jewish movements are represented.^[1][30]

Pagans

Taíno religious practices have to a degree been rediscovered/reinvented by a handful of advocates. Various African religious practices have been present since the arrival of enslaved Africans. In particular, the Yoruba beliefs of Santería and/or Ifá, and the Kongo-derived Palo Mayombe (sometimes called an African belief system, but rather a way of Bantu lifestyle of Congo origin) find adherence among very few individuals who practice some form of African traditional religion.

CIA World Factbook demographic statistics

Demographics of Puerto Rico, Data of FAO, year 2005 ; Number of inhabitants in thousands.

The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.

Population: 3,916,632 (July 2005 est.)

Gender:^[31]

• Men: 1,845,154
• Women: 2,020,126

Age structure:
0–14 years: 22% (male 441,594; female 421,986)
15–64 years: 65.5% (male 1,228,583; female 1,337,066)
65 years and over: 12.4% (male 211,283; female 276,120) (2005 est.)

Population growth rate: 0.47% (2005 est.)

Birth rate: 13.93 births/1,000 population (2005 est.)

Death rate: 7.86 deaths/1,000 population (2005 est.)

Net migration rate: -1.38 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2005 est.)

Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
15–64 years: 0.92 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.76 male(s)/female
total population: 0.92 male(s)/female (2005 est.)

Infant mortality rate: 8.24 deaths/1,000 live births (2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 78.29 years
male: 74.35 years
female: 82.43 years (2005 est.)

Total fertility rate: 1.91 children born/woman (2005 est.)

Nationality:
noun: American (US citizens) (Puerto Rican is akin to Pennsylvanian or Floridian or Hawaiian)
adjective: Puerto Rican

Ethnic Groups (2007):^[32]

• White 76.2%; (mostly Spanish origin)
• Black 6.9%;
• Amerindian 0.2%;
• Asian 0.3%
• Mixed 4.4%
• other 12%

Religions: Roman Catholic 85%, Protestant and other 15%

Languages: Spanish (main language), English

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 94.1%
male: 93.9%
female: 94.4% (2002 est.)

See also

• Puerto Rican people
• Demographics of the United States

References

External links

• The End of Slavery ...
• How Puerto Rico Became White: Racial analysis
• Puerto rico 2005 Fact finder statistics
• United Nations country profile
• Genetic Make-up of Puerto Ricans

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