🇺🇸 🇵🇷 📉 Births in Puerto Rico and Births to Mothers of Puerto Rican Ethnicity in the United States

Neolithic HVAC Technician on X:

With Puerto Rico recently a subject of discussion, I looked for and failed to find any resource aggregating births in Puerto Rico *and* births to Puerto Ricans in the United States, so I gathered the data and created my own chart, covering 1910-2025. Lines are cumulative.

The peak year for births in Puerto Rico was 1947, for Puerto Rican births in the USA was 2018, and the high water mark for combined births was 1990. Births to PR mothers in the US surpassed births in PR in 2001, when fertility in PR fell decisively below replacement.

A few notes on the data. First, births for Puerto Rican mothers in the US can only be estimated prior to 1989, as not all states reported detailed Hispanic categories before that point, but with Census data available, my estimates are probably not far off the mark.

Second, not all births in Puerto Rico are to ethnically Puerto Rican mothers, but the vast majority have been, making it not worth the effort (IMO) to sort them out. In 2024, over 94% of births in Puerto Rico were to ethnically Puerto Rican mothers, and over 97% were Hispanic.

Finally, the US NCHS has not tallied *deaths* by Hispanic ethnicity, so it's not possible to know PR+US death totals for Puerto Ricans. However, Puerto Rico reported about 33,000 deaths for 2024, which implies perhaps 40-50k annual stateside deaths. We are probably at "peak PR."

📎 Neolithic HVAC Technician