it or represent simply relief payments. Puerto Rico has
been particularly fortunate in that it has shared in
social insurance and other welfare programs as well as
benefitting from expenditure programs of the Federal
government.

Two major means by which governments touch the life of
their populations are public health and education. Both
have consequences for economic developments which are
dealt with, in considerable detail in the present study,
as they have been evidenced in Puerto Rican experience.
The literature on economic development gives heavy emphasis
to the implications, for population growth, of the decline
in mortality which everywhere is preceding or accompanying
industrialization. There is also much speculation and some
faith in the existence of an automatic mechanism by which
economic development induces fertility rates to decline.
Sometimes it is said that economic development is a race
between birth and mortality rates, but with the latter
off to a head start.

Again Puerto Rico is fortunate. Its population in
recent years is more or less stationary as out-migration
to the mainland has been but slightly less than the
natural increments to its population. Except for this,
the gains in productivity accompanying its economic
development would have largely been dissipated, with
relatively small gains at best in per capita income.
Assuming no more capital available for expansion than
has been the case, the increments to the labor force
would have found employment in the underemployment of
agriculture and trade.

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