Puerto Rico Demographics

Like most Latin Americans, Puerto Ricans are an ethnic mix of their Spanish, African, and Native American ancestors. Today, 80.5% of islanders identify themselves as white (of primarily Spanish origin), 8% as black, 0.4% as Native American, 0.2% as Asian, and the remaining 10.9% as mixed or other. However, almost everyone on the island has a dark complexion and darker hair, regardless of their self-classification. The island’s African heritage is most prominent on the coast, especially in the town of Loíza, and people of Native American ancestry remain predominantly in the central mountains. Since Puerto Rico was too poor a country throughout much of its history to afford many African slaves, Puerto Rico’s strong African cultural heritage stems more from free blacks than from slaves. Racial discrimination is rare in Puerto Rico.

The Most Beautiful Women In The World Do we have your attention yet? Like many Latin American countries, Puerto Rico hosts a plethora of beauty pageants, and the island prides itself on producing some of the most beautiful females in the world. Almost every major island festival elects some sort of queen or princess; the crème de la crème go on to represent Puerto Rico in the annual Miss Universe pageant, where the island has met with incredible success. Puerto Rico has had an unheard-of five wins throughout the pageant’s history, the most in recent in 2006. Clearly, it’s more than nature that makes Puerto Rico the Isla Encantadora.

Puerto Rico’s population is most notable for its sheer size—the island is one of the most densely populated regions in the world. This population trend began in the early 19th century, when many Latin Americans immigrated to Puerto Rico in order to escape revolutions in their own countries. A high birth rate continued to push population numbers up until the mid-20th century. After the beginning of Operation Bootstrap, the birth rate began to decline, but the death rate also declined and life expectancy rose accordingly—keeping population numbers steady. Furthermore, as Puerto Rico became relatively prosperous, residents of neighboring islands Cuba and Hispaniola (especially the Dominican Republic) began immigrating in floods. The resulting population of around 4 million (as of the July 2007 estimate) on an island only three times as large as Rhode Island produces a staggering population density of 1127 people per square mile, higher than any of the 50 US states. Luckily, the annual growth rate has finally fallen to 0.393% and the population seems to be leveling off.

Operation Bootstrap encouraged Puerto Ricans to move to the cities, and today 71% of the population lives in urban areas, with almost one-third of the total population residing in the greater San Juan area. Currently, upwards of three million Puerto Ricans live in the US, at least one third of them in New York City (the so-called “Nuyoricans”).