Demographics
The Island of Puerto Rico
- Population: 3,989,133 (July 2011 est.) one of the most densely populated islands in the world
- There are about 1,000 people per square mile, a ratio higher than within any of the 50 states in the United States.
- Many Puerto Ricans have returned to their island home, in large part because of inadequate economic opportunity in the United States.
- Primary Ethnicity: Hispanic
- Ethnic Composition: White (mostly Spanish origin) 76.2%, Black 6.9%, Asian 0.3%, Amerindian 0.2%, mixed 4.4%, other 12% (2007)
Puerto Rican Population in the U.S.
Sources:
- Since Puerto Rico was annexed to the United States in the wake of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Puerto Ricans are citizens by birth, and there are no legal barriers to their entry to the U.S.
- The Puerto Rican population in the mainland U.S. was relatively small until large-scale Puerto Rican migration to the U.S. began after World War II. The primary destination for migrants at that time was the New York metropolitan area.
- Beginning in the 1960s, the rate of migration fell as job opportunities in the Northeastern U.S. began to decline.
- The Puerto Rican population in the United States reached 4.2 million, according to the 2008 American Community Survey, surpassing the population on the island of Puerto Rico, which was 3.8 million in the same year.
- The Puerto Rican population in 2008 was concentrated in two areas: the New York metropolitan area and the state of Florida.
- The Puerto Rican population in the U.S. is the second largest subgroup of the Hispanic population, after Mexican-Americans.
- The 2.3 million Puerto Ricans not living in these areas were scattered broadly, with only five states having as many as 100 thousand Puerto Rican residents (California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Texas).
Sources:
- http://welcome.topuertorico.org/people.shtml
- http://www.enciclopediapr.org/ing/article.cfm?ref=08100301&page=2
- http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/acs/paa2010/Collazo_Ryan_Bauman_PAA2010_Paper.pdf