Spatial population trends and economic development in Puerto Rico, 1765–2010

Rural Puerto Rico in the early twentieth century reconsidered: Land and society, 1899-1915

Brian Marein

European Review of Economic History, 2021, vol. 25, issue 4, 723-756

Abstract: I use data for consistently defined municipalities to describe spatial patterns in population growth in Puerto Rico across all stages of economic development and rule by Spain and then the United States. The spatial distribution of population began to resemble the modern distribution after the turn of the twentieth century, around the time that municipal population densities diverged. Municipal population growth was positively correlated with crop production in the preindustrial era and was negatively correlated with agricultural employment from 1899 to 1970. Urbanization commenced around 1900, decades earlier than generally believed and before most of the Caribbean and Central America.

Keywords: Puerto Rico; United States; Spain; economic history; economic geography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/heab002 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:25:y:2021:i:4:p:723-756.

Access Statistics for this article

European Review of Economic History is currently edited by Christopher M. Meissner, Steven Nafziger and Alessandro Nuvolari

More articles in European Review of Economic History from European Historical Economics Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().