Long before the winds of Hurricane Maria reached Puerto Rico, another disaster had been wrenching and scattering the lives of island residents.
During the decade before Maria, economic decline and depopulation, a slower-moving catastrophe, had been taking a staggering toll: The number of residents had plunged by 11 percent, the economy had shrunk by 15 percent, and the government had become unable to pay its bills.
It already ranked among the worst cycles of economic decline and depopulation in postwar American history, and projections indicated that the island’s slide could continue for years.
Then came Maria.
Now, even as officials in Washington and Puerto Rico undertake the recovery, residents are expected to leave en masse, fueling more economic decline and potentially accelerating a vicious cycle.
“We are watching a real live demographic and population collapse on a monumental scale,” according to Lyman Stone, an independent migration researcher and economist at the Agriculture Department. The hurricane hit “might just be the kick in the pants Puerto Rico needs to really fall off this demographic cliff into total epochal-level demographic disaster.”
Whatever happens with Puerto Rico, moreover, will have far-reaching effects, because while the disaster is felt most keenly on the island, the accelerated exodus is already being felt on the mainland.
Cities popular with Puerto Ricans, such as Orlando, Fla., Hartford, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., are bracing for more students, many of whom come from families living below the poverty level.
Politicians, meanwhile, are weighing the potentially significant electoral consequences of a wave of migrants expected to lean Democratic — especially in Florida. The swing state already boasts half a million Puerto Rican-born residents, and more are expected in Maria’s aftermath.
Indeed, at a news conference last week, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello warned that without significant help, “millions” could leave for the U.S. mainland.
“You’re not going to get hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans moving to the States — you’re going to get millions,” Rossello said. “You’re going to get millions, creating a devastating demographic shift for us here in Puerto Rico.”
Puerto Rico Treasury Secretary Raul Maldonado has warned, meanwhile, that without more aid, the government could suffer a shutdown by the end of the month.
Prolonged bouts of economic decline and depopulation have afflicted parts of the United States before. During seven years in the 1950s, the number of people living in West Virginia dropped by 8 percent. New York lost 4 percent of its population in the 1970s. And during one stretch in the 1950s, Arkansas shed a whopping 11 percent of its people.
But in depth, the cycle of economic decline and depopulation on the island of 3.4 million people may prove the most punishing.
“Even before Maria, you had what looked like a death spiral going on,” said Gregory Makoff, a bond researcher who worked on the Treasury Department’s Puerto Rico team and now is a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation. “Now it’s no longer theoretical. In a week’s time, they’ve lost another huge chunk of the population.”
For years before the economic slide, companies such as Merck, Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo had saved tens of millions or more annually under a key tax break that gave U.S. companies an incentive to set up operations on the island.
But in 2006, the tax break was eliminated, taking away a key incentive for companies to operate there. It was one of many factors blamed for the island’s decline.
Among the others: The island’s electrical power system is outdated and saddles islanders with bills roughly double what they are on the mainland; an exodus of doctors has opened holes in the health care system; and the economy’s most critical sector, manufacturing, has been shrinking even more rapidly than the rest of the economy, affected not just by the lost tax break but also by global competition.