Puerto Rico and Braaaaaaiiiiins
No Jobs for the Unskilled, No Wages for the Skilled
You can’t write about brain drain appropriately without zombie jokes. So there, I got it out of my system.
Today’s (hopefully short) post is about the educational makeup of Puerto Rico migration to and from the United States. I’ve written about Puerto Rico before, and talked about migration by age and income, but I skipped education. You can see my age/income charts here:
But the summary is as follows: the typical Puerto Rican out-migrant is a young, low-income family leaving a rental housing unit.
But I’ve been asked recently about the educational composition of Puerto Rico’s migration, which I did not explicitly cover. So now I’ll explicitly cover it. The impetus is simple: google “Puerto Rico brain drain.” It’s a big story. The educational composition has been a topic of public discussion. So the question is simple: is Puerto Rico losing all its educated people to the United States?
Spoiler: no.
Most Migrants Are Not College-Educated
Data From the American Community Survey
The below chart shows the number of migrants from Puerto Rico to the United States from 2007 to 2014, by educational qualification, among the population aged 25 and older.
As you can see, the biggest categories of migrants are those with the least education. Let me make it simpler. The chart below shows the share of PR → US migrants with bachelor’s or higher degrees.
Between 20–25% of all PR → US migrants have college degrees. In other words, 75–80% don’t. That share has risen since 2010, but is not outside the historic range.
We can also look at the outflow rate by qualification. Let’s do it. It’ll be fun.
Here we see that, on average, better-educated people are somewhat more likely to leave, but not always. Indeed, from 2010–2012, graduate-degree-holders were among the least likely to leave. By and large, this chart seems to suggest that there are no discernible, enduring, structural differences in outflow rates between different educational levels.
In our words, more technically, there is fairly weak evidence that migration from Puerto Rico to the United States positively selects for education generally.
Now, I can’t control for age and education at the same time. It is possible that this data is hiding a trend whereby young educated people are leaving at high rates. But I can’t prove that from the data I have on hand, and I only go into the microdata if I’m being paid (true story).
So. Outflows from Puerto Rico don’t have a strong educational bias, and are overwhelmingly of those with fairly little education.
What about inflows?
Lots of People Move to Puerto Rico
Data From the American Community Survey
Just as many commentators on migration in developing countries assume a kind of unidirectionality of flows from poor to rich countries, so many Puerto Rico commentators wrongly assume that Puerto Rican migration is unidirectional. It isn’t. Although Puerto Rico’s outflows are easily twice the size of inflows, inflows are nonetheless significant. So let’s look at inflows by educational qualification. For inflow data, I can go back to 2005.
Well lookee there! Since 2005, inflows have been about steady for college graduates, but have fallen dramatically for those with little education. If I had to guess, I’d wager that reflects a decline in Puerto Rican return-migration. Let’s make a bet. If I’m right, I don’t advertise my Podcast beyond this link. If I’m wrong, you agree to subscribe to my Podcast. Deal? Deal. We’ll resolve this bet later.
For now, let’s look at the college-educated share of inflows.
Well would ya look at that. Degree-holders used to be a smaller share of inflows than they were of outflows. But now they’re a bigger share of inflows. Amazing how economic collapse tends to lead to the most economically sensitive people (poor, low-skilled) having the most vigorous response.
Let’s look at the inflow rate by qualification too.
Inflows of college graduates do indeed seem low for most of the period, but it turns out that inflows of those with graduate degrees occur at the highest rates.
Weirdly, though, that graduate degree rate has fallen. Why is that? Well, let’s look at the populations involved.
This chart says it all. Puerto Rico is experiencing a population decline, yet the graduate-degree population is growing, the bachelor’s degree population is growing, the high-school graduate population is growing. Only the “some college” and the “less than high school” populations are shrinking, and the vast majority of the decline is among non-college-graduates. In other words, the lion’s share of Puerto Rico’s population decline is explained by loss of the low-skilled population.
Finally, a chart on net migration rates.
As you can see, Puerto Rico does have the steepest net outflows for graduate degree holders, and the least severe outflows among the least skilled. But that’s not a classic brain drain story. What’s really happening, as the graduate-degree-population graph shows, is that Puerto Rico creates a lot of graduate degree-holders. It’s like saying universities have brain drain: of course they do; their job is to make brains to be drained. Puerto Rico’s situation is not the same, but the math is similar: large net outflows, yet a growing degreed population. Why? Because Puerto Rico is training lots of people. Here’s a chart of the college and advanced degree holders as a share of Puerto Rico’s population:
There’s only one way this happens: training lots of degree holders.
So this isn’t brain drain. This is Puerto Rico choosing to train lots of high-skilled people, despite having few high-wage jobs, and meanwhile maintaining an economic environment inhospitable to low-skilled workers. In other words, Puerto Rico is a college town with really bad town-gown relations.
Plus, these high-skilled outflows are not new. They occurred years and years ago. What’s new for Puerto Rico is the worsening balance for low-skilled migration.
Settling the Bet
Now Subscribe, Darnit!
Here’s inflows of Hispanic or Latino migrants into Puerto Rico (I can’t get Puerto Rican place of birth) divided by the Puerto Rican-born population of the 50 states DC, 2010–2014 (the years available).
Looks like a decline in Puerto Rican return migration to me. Pay up and subscribe to my Podcast. You won’t regret it.
Conclusion
Puerto Rico’s story is not a story of brain drain, but of worsening conditions for low-skilled Puerto Ricans relative to the United States. More low-skilled Puerto Ricans are leaving, and fewer Puerto Ricans are returning to the island. Yes, net outflows among the educated continue, but they are no worse than in the past, and have not led to a shrinking educated population. In fact, the average educational attainment of Puerto Rico’s population is rising due to changes in migration since 2007. Virtually all of Puerto Rico’s declining population is explained by a declining low-education population. This suggests that the mainland U.S. offers much better economic opportunities for these people, even as high-skilled net outflows continue due to relatively low wages for educated people in Puerto Rico.
So what Puerto Rico needs is simple: more low-skill jobs, but higher high-skill wages. Simple in theory, that is. How to do it is another question.
See my previous post, reviewing winners and losers from new IRS data.
Check out my new 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.
