Puerto Rico: Photos and Discussion

[BirdMan]

it all sums up 110%..anyway 70-80% middle class is huge...what about the official numbers?

Whoops, I guess I'm not as good at math as I thought.

I found this data from the US census and it shows the breakdown by family income in nominal USD.

Family Income (USD, nominal) / Number / Margin of Error / Percentage / Margin of Error



The answer to your question depends on how we define what constitutes each class. Using my own (not at all authoritative) definitions, this is the "true" class breakdown of the island. It is important to note that these numbers do not take into account informal/black market economic activity (which is important in PR and everywhere in LatAm).

Lower Class (0-14,999$ income): 33.9%
Middle Class (15,000- 99,000$ income): 61.5%
Upper and Upper Middle (>99,000$ income): 3.9%

The numbers I gave before were just my impression of the situation on the island, so it's interesting to see how my perception differs from reality. It seems I overetimated the size of the upper classes and underrestimated the sixe of the lower class population. This is probably because I live in a gated community, so I mainly socialize with similar people and rarely come into contact with people on the lower end of the economic spectrum.

[BirdMan]

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to post pictures in this thread because that's always controversial, but my friend just took this one. I thought I'd post it because I think it captures the diversity of our people really well and shows the range of phenotypes we can have.

[Argentano]

Whoops, I guess I'm not as good at math as I thought.

I found this data from the US census and it shows the breakdown by family income in nominal USD.

Family Income (USD, nominal) / Number / Margin of Error / Percentage / Margin of Error



The answer to your question depends on how we define what constitutes each class. Using my own (not at all authoritative) definitions, this is the "true" class breakdown of the island. It is important to note that these numbers do not take into account informal/black market economic activity (which is important in PR and everywhere in LatAm).

Lower Class (0-14,999$ income): 33.9%
Middle Class (15,000- 99,000$ income): 61.5%
Upper and Upper Middle (>99,000$ income): 3.9%

The numbers I gave before were just my impression of the situation on the island, so it's interesting to see how my perception differs from reality. It seems I overetimated the size of the upper classes and underrestimated the sixe of the lower class population. This is probably because I live in a gated community, so I mainly socialize with similar people and rarely come into contact with people on the lower end of the economic spectrum.

great information...this one makes more sense IMHO

[zhaoyun]

Should just become our 51st state. Stop dicking around already, come on.

[BirdMan]

great information...this one makes more sense IMHO

How would you say those numbers compare to other areas of Latin America? I know the Southern cone has a strong middle class, but my understanding is that most other Latin American countries have very weak ones.

[Argentano]

How would you say those numbers compare to other areas of Latin America? I know the Southern cone has a strong middle class, but my understanding is that most other Latin American countries have very weak ones.

see page 4, 2012 information

http://www.sv.undp.org/content/dam/e...ociales_AL.pdf

[BirdMan]

Interesting, thanks for linking that report!

[BirdMan]

Why did someone give this thread one star? It's not meant to be polemical, I just wanted to share some pictures of my island and answer any questions about it.

[BirdMan]

One of my friends posted this pucture on facebook and I thought it was interesting because it showcases our traditional dress.

[BirdMan]

Bump! I'm going to be posting some info about the European, African, and Amerindian ancestry of the island and its distribution. The data I'll be using mainly comes from the study "History shaped the geographic distribution of genomic admixture on the island of Puerto Rico" and assumes a normal distribution.