Pre-hurricane linkages between poverty, families, and migration among Puerto Rican-origin children living in Puerto Rico and the United States

Puerto Rican children comprise a historically vulnerable group that has garnered little attention from academics and policy makers. Then, Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the already impoverished island of Puerto Rico in 2017. It is imperative to understand the demographic, social, and economic patterns of Puerto Ricans in the past decade, in order to assess the true impact of the destructive 2017 hurricanes on Puerto Rican children and their families, and identify ways to address current population needs. This study fills this gap in the literature by providing recent pre-hurricane socioeconomic outcomes of Puerto Rican-origin children in Puerto Rico and the United States. It applies an origin-destination framework by relying on American Community Survey and Puerto Rico Community Survey data from 2012 to 2016. The analyses consider the linkages among family migration experiences, children’s living arrangements, and household poverty levels. The findings are evaluated regarding prior research.