Puerto Rican Population Declines on Island, Grows on U.S. Mainland

*The main reasons for migration of any kind are economy and safety. An economic push is moving people from Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland. VL

By D’Vera Cohn, Eileen Patten and Mark Hugo  Lopez, Pew Hispanic Trends Project

Puerto Ricans have left the financially troubled island for the U.S. mainland this decade in their largest numbers since the Great Migration after World War II, citing job-related reasons above all others.

U.S. Census Bureau data show that 144,000 more people left the island for the mainland than the other way around from mid-2010 to 2013, a larger gap between emigrants and migrants than during the entire decades of the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. This escalated loss of migrants fueled the island’s first sustained population decline in its history as a U.S. territory, even as the stateside Puerto Rican population grew briskly.

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[Photo  by @EffStopp/Flickr]