Has Puerto Rico Hit the Migration Rock-Bottom?
Updating the Data for the 2015 ACS
I’ve written about Puerto Rico several times because it’s pretty good click-bait.
So now it’s time to update you on what’s happened on the Island!
Since last we talked, we’ve gotten the 2015 American Community Survey. Let’s look at what it shows us.
In 2015, outflows from Puerto Rico to the US rose. Inflows did too, as did international inflows, but neither rose appreciably above recent historic ranges. Net domestic migration remained essentially flat.
We can also plug the new ACS data into our long-run estimates of Puerto Rico’s net migration.
This shows us a continuing steep decline in migration, with net flows at record-negative levels. However, converting these estimates to a net migration rate softens the blow a bit.
Now, to be fair, this chart is a bit misleading. In order to smooth together various data sources across many years, I have used some averaging, with the result that very recent changes only show up in a very muted way. So let’s look at the ACS net migration values since 2005, annually.
What we see in the ACS is that net migration remains at deeply negative levels, but in absolute terms was no worse than in 2014. Unfortunately, because Puerto Rico’s population has continued to decline in 2015, this “no worse” net migration volume actually is a slightly worse net migration rate.
We can also revisit the airline data I’ve shown in a previous post. Again, comparing to ACS-measured net domestic migration, we can compare airline data up through 2015, as well as a forecast for 2016 based on the 7 months of data available thus far.
While net migration and air traffic balances usually move together, they’ve shown some considerable variation in 2015. While air traffic became steeply negative, migration stayed about flat. This could reflect many different factors, such as if recent Puerto Rican migrants are less willing to answer surveys, or even the seasonality of migration with respect to the seasonality of ACS survey-taking and passenger flights. But we do, in the forecast for 2016 flights, see a leveling out there as well, so it seems possible that we are going to “hit bottom” for Puerto Rico’s net migration sometime within the 2014–2016 window. It’s not guaranteed, but it does seem possible.
The ACS doesn’t just tell us how many people moved. It can also tell us who moved. We can start by looking at a kind of all-in mobility rate: how many people moved away from their home, to anywhere?
It turns out that the total rate of residential mobility for Puerto Ricans has been pretty stable. Increases in migration to the US have been offset by decreases in migration within Puerto Rico. In other words, life events that formerly might have triggered intra-island moves now seem to be triggering moves to the mainland.
We can also see demographic characteristics of migrants. I won’t bore you with a gazillion charts here. Most previously-observed trends have continued. Net migration rates for homeowners remain about break-even, while net rates for renters are incredibly high and getting worse. Net migration for the elderly is about breakeven, while migration for 5–59 year-olds is very low and getting worse (oddly migration improved for kids under 4). The 60+ population continues to grow, and now numbers over 24% of the population, versus under 19% in 2007.
Married households continue to show falling migration rates, and now have the most steeply negative net migration of all. Widowed and divorced households have the least negative rates. Households with higher incomes continue to show more steeply negative migration than households with low or no incomes.
But lest you should think that this is all elite people moving away, remember that Puerto Rico is not a textbook case of brain drain. Puerto Rico’s net migration rate is pretty similar across educational levels, and in fact it has seen a dramatic decline in the least-educated segment of the population, although a substantial part of this decline is due to mortality of the elderly, as well as training efforts. A dearth of employment opportunities may have encouraged many Puerto Ricans to go back to school, explaining why the college-educated population with at least some college has grown by about 100,000 people even as the population with no college experience has declined by over 255,000 people since 2007. Only 90,000 of that decline can be directly accounted for via migration, while the college population has also seen about an 80,000 person loss due to migration.
In some sense, then, it would appear that low employment opportunities for Puerto Ricans may be encouraging educational attainment, which may itself be viewed by some of those students as a way off the island into a more prosperous mainland career. The size of this effect is not clear, but it is genuinely remarkable to see so pronounced a decline in the unskilled population. It’s rare to see a quarter-million people vanish like that.
Conclusion
Puerto Rico is in the midst of deep economic difficulty. This has led to pronounced effects in its migration, which we can observe in official migration data as well as other indicators, like airline passenger traffic. However, recent stabilization in all of these metrics, as well as lower and lower levels of the high-migration-likelihood population, would indicate that Puerto Rico may be near the bottom in terms of migration. This isn’t a guarantee, and if we get the 2016 data and it turns out to show something else, then I’ll eat crow. Furthermore, there is no meaningful evidence of an upturn just yet; Puerto Rico could remain at its present deeply negative net migration rates for some time to come. This will lead to further demographic decline, especially as the long-run impact of fewer children and young women is felt. This demographic decline will in turn continue to strain Puerto Rico’s finances. In other words, saying Puerto Rico may have hit bottom in terms of migration is not equivalent to saying its economic woes are over.
Check out my Podcast about the history of American migration.
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I’m a graduate of the George Washington University’s Elliott School with an MA in International Trade and Investment Policy, and an economist at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. I like to learn about migration, the cotton industry, airplanes, trade policy, space, Africa, and faith. I’m married to a kickass Kentucky woman named Ruth.
My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I did not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research. More’s the pity.
