El costo de la pobreza infantil en Puerto Rico

Abstract

Puerto Rico‘s prosperity depends on the well-being and healthy development of its children. But for many Puerto Rican children, their well-being and development are threatened by poverty. Children living in poverty go to low quality schools, their health status is lower than that of children with higher resources, they are also are more likely to drop out of high school, and are more likely to be impacted by criminality, either as victims or as offenders. While some children will be able to overcome these disadvantages and succeed despite poverty, many will get lost along the way. In their adulthood, a large share of these children will have lower levels of education, lower wages, higher unemployment, worse health conditions, and more exposure to crime and violence. This means for Puerto Rico less productivity, less production of goods and services, poor allocation of private resources, fewer resources for development, and other deficiencies because of poverty. According to our analysis, if we consider lost wages, poor health and the highest level of crime, the annual cost of child poverty is $4.4 billion, or 4.3% of gross domestic product.