Document Type
Report
Publication Date
9-2023
Abstract
On November 15, 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Housing, Community Renewal, and Insurance held a hearing entitled “Persistent Poverty in America: Addressing Chronic Disinvestment in Colonias, the U.S. Territories and the Southern Blackbelt.” Dr. Yarimar Bonilla, then CENTRO’s director, provided testimony concerning Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories. These jurisdictions the subcommittee focused on have historically had high rates of poverty, higher relative to other places in the United States. Puerto Rico’s poverty and overall economic conditions have fluctuated over the decades taking a clear turn for the worse beginning in 2006 with an enduring economic crisis, which was made worse with the natural disasters that struck Puerto Rico in 2017 and 2020; and hampered even further by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic beginning in 2020. This congressional hearing spurred us at CENTRO to take stock of current conditions of poverty in Puerto Rico in an effort to direct policymakers’ attention to a pervasive problem. Its persistence is rooted in structural conditions and institutional frameworks. This report expands on CENTRO’s testimony before Congress, providing a more detailed analysis of pervasive poverty in Puerto Rico.
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