Britain and the United States in the Caribbean: A Comparative Study in Methods of Development

Both the British and the United States dependencies are, of course, poor areas as compared with their metropolitan countries. Per capita income in Jamaica during 1949 was £61·91,¹ as compared with a per capita income of £200² in the United Kingdom during the same year. Per capita income in Puerto Rico in 1944 was $228, as compared with $541 for Mississippi, the poorest of the states of the Union.³ Income is unevenly distributed in the sense that a relatively small percentage of the population enjoys a relatively large percentage of the national income.⁴ In Puerto Rico, for instance, eight-five per cent of the population receives twenty-nine per cent of the island's net income, and fourteen per cent the remaining seventy-one per cent. There are, however, very few people wealthy by metropolitan standards living in the area, and none the redistribution of whose income would make any significant difference in the economy.⁵

None of the islands has mineral deposits in commercial quantities with the exception of Trinidad, which has oil, and asphalt,⁶

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