The Planning Board expects there to be more deaths than births in the United States territory of Puerto Rico this year for the first time since the agency began recording this statistic in 1935.
The Puerto Rico agency estimates deaths in 2016 at 28,900 and births at 28,200.
Officials said that the only age group increasing in size in the islands is individuals 65 years of age and older.
The biggest factor in the territory’s decline in population during the past decade has been the relocation of approximately 300,000 Puerto Ricans to a State. The migration is greater in numbers than the movement of Puerto Ricans to the States during the 1950s, the previous period of the largest migration. Florida officials report that there are now more than one million people of Puerto Rican descent residing in the State.
