PRESS RELEASE

DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

67,000 people immigrated from Puerto Rico to the United States in 2016

This represents a new record, as revealed by the most recent Migrant Profile published by the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics.

San Juan, PR, June 20, 2018 — In 2016 89,000 people immigrated to the United States, thus maintaining the same record level as last year, while there was an increase of 3,000 compared to 2015, for a total of -67,000 people, who emigrated in net terms. This represents a new immigration record for Puerto Rico.

This was revealed in the 2016 Migrant Profile, which was released today and presents a look at the migratory movement of Puerto Rico in the 2016 calendar year using the Survey on the Community of U.S. Census Bureau, as well as the net movement data of air passengers from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and the Ports Authority. Here are some of the report's other key findings:

1. In 2016, Puerto Rico's migration indicators showed that:

• -24,000 people immigrated to the United States with some post-secondary education in net terms (Community Survey)
• -84 thousand air passengers to all destinations in net terms (BTS)
• -98 thousand air passengers to all destinations in net terms, (Ports Authority)

2. For 2016 (before considering the impact of the 2017 hurricanes), the current wave of migration showed no sign of abating. In the 12-year period between 2005 and 2016, in net terms:

• -524 thousand people immigrated to the United States (Community Survey)
• -662,000 air passengers departed to all destinations (BTS)
• -830 thousand air passengers departed to all destinations (Ports Authority)

3. The ten states with the highest net migration balance in relation to Puerto Rico were Florida, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, Georgia, New Jersey, Virginia and Kentucky.

4. Between 2015 and 2016, the profile of the population that migrated between Puerto Rico and the United States changed in several ways:

• The difference in the median age between the emigrant and immigrant population of Puerto Rico was minimal, close to 0.4 years, with the youngest emigrants having a median age of 29.5 years and the immigrants being 29.9 years old.
• The percentage of the emigrant population with some post-secondary education showed an increase of 4 percentage points from 53% to 57%; this percentage of people for the immigrant population increased by 3 percentage points from 45% to 48%.
• The percentage of emigrants who are out of the labor force (after migrating) decreased by 3 percentage points between 2015 (41%) and 2016 (38%) and among immigrants it increased by 8 percentage points from 50% to 58%.
• The median income of emigrants and immigrants between Puerto Rico and the United States increased by 13 and 7 percent respectively between 2015 and 2016.

5. In 2016, 46% of immigrants and 38% of migrants were living in poverty.

6. The occupational group with the highest frequency among emigrants was Management and Professional, followed by Sales and Office occupations. As for specific occupations:

• Between 457 and 3,831 emigrants were employed as customer service representatives.
• Between 764 and 3,212 were employed by retailers, it was estimated that between 826 and 2,412 emigrants were teachers and between 548 and 2,324 were cashiers.

“Among the characteristics examined in 2016, a remarkable 57% of emigrants aged 25 and over had some education greater than high school. In addition, the percentage of emigrants outside the labor force once mobilized in the United States was 37%, compared to 55% with a similar characteristic in Puerto Rico. This picture makes clear the lack of opportunities on the island to allow more people to be inserted into the labor sector, even though more than half of the adults who decided to emigrate have some preparation and potential to be employed. One wonders if we are considering these types of indicators and their trends in order to counteract this pattern,” said Alberto L. Velázquez-Estrada, manager of statistical projects at the Institute.

The full report, as well as previous publications of the profile, are available on the Institute's portal at www.estadisticas.pr.gov, you can also access the various publications in the profile via direct link hither.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access. The Institute has in its inventory, accessible through www.estadisticas.pr.gov, about 300 statistical products. In addition, it is a custodian and provides access to over 100 data sets or “data sets” through www.data.pr.gov and to over 40 tables and more than 6 thousand indicators through: www.indicadores.pr.

In addition, as the leading entity of the SDC in Puerto Rico, the Institute manages the SDC portal, which contains the main statistical reports and publications of the U.S. Census Bureau on Puerto Rico, specifically those that are most in demand, such as annual population estimates; the Puerto Rico Community Survey (Puerto Rico Community Survey) and official statistics on Puerto Rico's 10-year population and housing censuses, among others. The Puerto Rico SDC portal can be accessed through: https://censo.estadisticas.pr/.

For more information you can visit our website: www.estadisticas.pr.gov. In addition, you can follow us on social networks through Facebook (estadisticas.pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico) accounts.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes/(787) 688-0401

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Executive Order Announced for Puerto Rican Public Service Census

PRESS RELEASE
DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

April 25, 2018

INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS ORDERS PUBLICATION OF MORTALITY DATA

The decision of the Board of Directors paves the way for greater transparency to save lives after future hurricanes in Puerto Rico and supports ongoing efforts to review the number of deaths as a result of Hurricane Maria.

The Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico (Institute) announced today the approval of a series of methodological standards that must be used to measure the number of fatalities from future natural disasters in Puerto Rico, as well as to produce final estimates of the number of deaths as a result of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, a process that still remains incomplete today.

The methodological standards approved by the Institute's Board of Directors include: (1) the need to conduct a case-level epidemiological study to comprehensively measure the number of fatalities from any natural disaster, (2) the sources of information that should be used for this type of epidemiological study, (3) the criteria that will be used to attribute a specific death to a natural disaster, and (4) the set of mortality data that must be published online and updated daily.

The rules were approved in the Resolution No. 2018-03 of the Institute's Board approved this week. The Resolution also orders PRIS staff to take all necessary actions permitted under the Institute Enabling Act to ensure that these methodological standards are adopted and implemented by the Government of Puerto Rico.

For example, under the Resolution No. 2018-03, PRIS expert staff and financial resources are available to ensure that an exhaustive case-level epidemiological study is carried out to complete the review of the number of fatalities from Hurricane Maria. In addition, the Resolution requires that any epidemiological study of cases of disaster-related mortality in Puerto Rico be able to take advantage of information from the following sources: death certificates, medical records, forensic pathology files and the testimony of family members.

In addition, the Resolution adopts the criteria and classification structure developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) for the attribution of a specific death to a natural disaster. These criteria are described in the Reference guide for the certification of deaths in the event of a natural, human-induced or chemical/radioactive disaster.

Finally, the Resolution describes the specific data fields that must be published and updated daily for each death on the Puerto Rico Open Data Portal:
https://data.pr.gov/. To do this, the Institute will use its authority, which includes powers such as subpoena, to request the necessary set of data from the Puerto Rico Health Department on a daily basis. The Institute will also be available to train staff from the Puerto Rico Department of Health, so that they can upload the necessary data sets themselves.

“As the next hurricane season approaches, we must work to ensure that Puerto Rico's data infrastructure is better prepared to inform our citizens and the world about conditions in Puerto Rico. In the case of mortality, allowing people on the other side of the world to see our latest death records allows scientists around the world to analyze our data, even when there is no electricity or Internet in Puerto Rico, to identify patterns that can save lives in a timely manner. We owe it to the hundreds, if not the thousands, of people who died as a result of Hurricane Maria, so that we never allow this to happen again,” said Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, executive director of the Institute.

Currently, the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety attributes only 64 deaths to Hurricane Maria. In December, after several independent researchers discovered that the number of fatalities from Hurricane Maria could be more than a thousand, the Government of Puerto Rico ordered a review of Maria's death toll and stopped providing the public with monthly mortality totals.

The Resolution of the Institute's Board explicitly recognizes that in the 3 months following the passage of hurricanes Irma and María over Puerto Rico, there were higher-than-average deaths in Puerto Rico, amounting to more than a thousand, and that this increase in deaths is probably related to the passage of hurricanes Irma and María over Puerto Rico. The resolution also aims to support the work of a group of independent researchers from George Washington University who were hired by the Government of Puerto Rico to analyze various issues related to mortality after Hurricane Maria.

The Institute's Board had been carefully analyzing and considering the approval of this Resolution, after it was able to restart its work last month. Previously, he had not been able to meet, even before hurricanes Irma and María made landfall in Puerto Rico, due to a legal dispute that arose last summer, after the Governor tried to dismiss several members of the Institute's Board of Directors without due process. The dispute was finally resolved in the first instance last month, following a court ruling that the Governor lacked authority to dismiss Board members without due process.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access. The Institute has in its inventory, accessible through https://estadisticas.pr.gov/, about 300 statistical products. In addition, it is a custodian and provides access to over 100 data sets or “data sets” through https://data.pr.gov/ and to over 40 tables and more than 6 thousand indicators through: https://www.indicadores.pr/.

In addition, as the leading entity of Puerto Rico's SDC, the Institute manages the SDC portal, which contains the main statistical reports and publications of the U.S. Census Bureau on Puerto Rico, specifically those that are most in demand, such as annual population estimates; the Puerto Rico Community Survey and official statistics on Puerto Rico's decennial population and housing censuses, among others. The Puerto Rico SDC portal can be accessed through: https://censo.estadisticas.pr/.

For more information you can visit our website: https://estadisticas.pr.gov/. In addition, you can follow us on social networks through Facebook accounts (statistics.pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics).

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes/ (787) 688-0401

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