Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico: strong, sustained growth, 1980–2024

A US territory whose growth model rested on federal tax incentives for manufacturing, especially pharmaceuticals, Puerto Rico slid into a decade-long recession after those incentives were phased out in 2006, culminating in a 2016 government-debt crisis, a federal oversight board, and then Hurricane Maria in 2017. Between 1980 and 2024, Puerto Rico's GDP per capita grew from $4,503 to $39,344 (current US$), a compound annual growth rate of 5.0% — strong, sustained growth. Annual GDP growth averaged 1.6% with a year-to-year standard deviation of 3.2 points, reflecting relatively stable macroeconomic conditions. Structurally, agriculture's share of the economy moved from 2.6% to 0.7% of GDP (a classic decline as the economy industrialized/modernized), while services rose from 56.9% to 51.8% of GDP, a comparatively unusual pattern for this period. On human development, life expectancy rose from 73.1 to 81.9 years, while tertiary school enrollment moved from 78.6% to 77.9%, while the urban population share grew from 67.1% to 94.3%.

What this growth cost: Growth was not without cost: per-capita CO2 emissions fell from 10.35 to 4.82 tonnes CO2e per person.