Título en español.

Abstract

The article refers to the Human Development Index (HDI) of Puerto Rico and its components in the initial years of the Twenty-First Century. The indicators used to calculate the HDI are associated directly with the demographic, social and economic dimensions that constitute the basic premises for adopting the concept of "Sustainable Development". The HDI is published annually by the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP) and, since 1990, it is used by the international community to locate the position of each country regarding its level of development. The work is relevant, innovative and useful because it takes into account the national dimension of Puerto Rico. This is a reading that does not reach visibility in much of the publications of the UN system; an example is the Human Development Report that explicitly does not include Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico‘s HDI in the first lustrum of the Twenty-First Century reached a 0.853 value, between the 33 and 34 places of the list in the 2004 Human Development Report. A breakdown of the index in its components, which are associated with the quantity and quality of life, education and standard of living, shows a lag in certain dimensions, particularly in those associated with education indicators. With a value of 0.86 in the education index, Puerto Rico is located at site 70; with a value of 0.85 in the life expectancy at birth index, at site 33, and with a value of 0.85 in respect to GDP per capita, at site 36 of the list of countries in the world.