One of Puerto Rico's many shopping malls packed to the rafters on a typical weekend afternoon.
"Households in Puerto Rico have a median annual income of $20,296, which is less than the median annual income of $61,937 across the entire United States."
This is a very popular statistic often batted about like an economic shuttlecock by politicos on both sides of the net in the endless badminton game called "statehood." The reasoning goes this way: On the "for" side of the net, Puerto Rico needs statehood to achieve economic parity with the mainland. On the"against" side of the net, that statehood is not achievable because there is such a wide disparity between annual incomes.
The only problem with both sides of this argument is that the calculus is entirely wrong. I doubt anyone knows (or ever will know) the true median annual income of any household in Puerto Rico. But anyone who really thinks that its $20,296 for a family of four, need only spend a few hours shopping at any mall on the island.
Shopping is a national past time in Puerto Rico (like haircuts and manicures) and shoppers of all ages scurry into the malls and scurry back out a few hours later, loaded down with endless shopping bags of purchases. Whereas Puertoricans like minimalism in their homes, that aesthetic does not carry forth into their wardrobes; and many of those shopping bags are filled to overflowing with tissue-wrapped brand names that are in no way discounted from the prices offered on the mainland.
So this begs the question: how does a family of four survive on $20,296 per year, and still afford expensive clothes, shoes, and enough accessories to fill a dresser drawer? The answer is quite simple. No one is living on an average annual income of $20,296 per year.
Cash is king in Puerto Rico, and whatever income arrives into the household accounts not from a primary employer, that income will be tendered in cash. As a person who has spent the majority of his professional life in forensic accounting, I would estimate (based on spending patterns, food costs, housing costs, sales tax, and so on) that this magical number of $20,296 is off by two-thirds in the metropolitan area and by half in the countryside; which is to say between $40,000 and $61,000 per annum.
So the next time you read a piece about the sad and poverty-stricken plight of the Puertoricans living far below the U.S. poverty level, console yourself with knowledge that at least they are doing so in $150 shoes and an $85 polo shirt.
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