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Puerto Rican Births At Lowest Level in 80 Years

Puerto Rico’s Demographic Registry expects 20,700 births in 2019 — the lowest amount since records began being collected 80 years ago.

The number of deaths is projected to be 28,800, contributing to the population decline that is primarily due to residents moving from the territory to a State for greater opportunity as American citizens. The territory ’s population has been shrinking at the rate of about 1.8% per year since 2010.

The U.S. Census Bureau has estimated that the number of births in the islands will fall to 16,000 by 2050, a little less than half the number of people expected to die.

The number of births in 1989 was 66,777. By 1997, it had slipped to 64,324 before beginning a precipitous decline that was only slightly reversed from 2003 through 2005.

Meanwhile, the number of births to Puerto Rican mothers in the States grew to 77,938 last year. There may now be 5.8 million people of Puerto Rican origin in the States versus an insular population of less than  3.1 million.

The U,S. Census expects the population in the territory to fall to 2.1 million by 2050. It was about 3.85 million in 2004.

 

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