Puerto Rico - Cuba comparison

Puerto Rico and Cuba make an interesting comparison because both Caribbean islands were once Spanish colonies and then part of the United States after the Spanish-American War.  Cuba then went its own way, especially with the Castros and their communist system.

I have already compared the two on the basis of some national statistics, e.g., that; (i) Puerto Rican income per capita is now four times that in Cuba, when in 1950 they were essentially the same, (ii) Puerto Ricans are now more educated than Cubans, even though education is something that the Cuban government brags about.

My purpose here is to share some other impressions I had during recent visits to both places.

Cuban buildings are literally falling apart.  Puerto Rican buildings look essentially like buildings elsewhere in the United States.  Even the public housing in Puerto Rico looks much better than most Cuban buildings.  The Puerto Ricans also keep their yards looking nice (moreso than, say, Chicagoans).

There are abandoned structures in Puerto Rico.  I don’t remember seeing any in Cuba, except the (many) that were too unsafe to be habitable.

Satellite dishes for TV reception are very common in Puerto Rico, even in poor neighborhoods.  For the first fifty years after the Revolution, Cubans were prohibited from watching foreign TV (but with ingenuity and generous bribes, some Cubans broke this law).  I don’t remember seeing any residential satellite dishes in Cuba.

Although some Puerto Ricans told me that Cuba is less polluted, I got the opposite impression, especially the big smokestack in the middle of Havana.  Puerto Rico does have plenty of cars – supposedly more per square mile than any country in the world.  Few Cubans can afford a car.

I was amazed at the quality of the cars (and pickup trucks) even in the poorest Puerto Rican neighborhoods, both urban and rural.  Below is an example from the neighborhood known as La Perla.

[the video is not mine, but allows you to take your own La Perla tour]

Even at national franchises, food and services are often cheaper in Puerto Rico than in, say, Illinois.  But, in Cuba, restaurant meals, taxi rides, beverages, etc., have essentially the same dollar price as in Illinois even while Cuban incomes are an order of magnitude lower.  In other words, Cuba is terribly inefficient: even with cheap labor Cuba cannot manage to make things cheaply.

By all statistics, Puerto Rico is poorer than any U.S. state.  This was not obvious from walking around, but I admit that I have not seen, say, Mississippi in many years.  Also, there may be a lot of informal/underground-economy income in Puerto Rico, so that its official income statistics are not indicative of consumption.

I asked Puerto Ricans what they thought about Cuba, and typically they proclaimed that Cuba doesn’t have a public debt problem!  I presume, but did not confirm, that they are (i) not interested in trading their cars, nice houses and yards, internet, high-school diploma, cheap and available food, etc., for debt-free bragging rights and (ii) unaware that Castro’s Cuba was 30 years ahead of Puerto Rico when it came to defaulting on public debt.  Puerto Ricans do admit that people move from Cuba to Puerto Rico rather than vice versa.  

Who wrote this?

"High social transfers not tied to work incentives emerged as the most likely explanation for the low participation rate. The phase-in of ... minimum wage ... may have also helped to drive down participation rates."

This could be me describing the nationwide consequences of federal policy since 2007.

But the Brookings Institution, which refused to consider nationwide explanations like mine, wrote this!

about Puerto Rico (see p. 29)!

Cuban education lags

It is probably true that Communist Cuba destroyed its education system less than it destroyed other things.  But if you look on an absolute scale, the average education of the Cuban population has been lagging.

Some of the lag is due to the fact that Communism either killed or drove away comparatively educated people. But if that is masking Castro's success, that's no success!

Update: The Barro-Lee data say that, as of the year 2000, the majority of adults in Cuba had NOT graduated high school.  At the same time, the majority of adults in Puerto Rico HAD graduated high school (Table 5-3 of this book).

Thank you Fidel!

For making Puerto Rico look like paradise.

Journalists today will be making excuses like "Cuba is doing OK compared to developing countries."  They wouldn't dare make those comparisons to parts of the United States, because we ought to expect better.

Thanks to a Communist system, Cuba left the ranks of developED countries.  In contrast, nearby Puerto Rico far outpaced Cuba while the latter was practicing Communism.  In 1950, both were former Spanish colonies and had annual GDP per capita of about $350.  In 2014, Puerto Rican GDP per capita was more than quadruple Cuba’s.  And a number of people escaped Cuba to begin a new life in Puerto Rico, with hardly anyone doing the reverse.

And this chart does not count the fact that, by comparison to Puerto Rico, so much of what a Cuban produces goes to the government rather than the workers.

It is quite irrelevant that there are some African countries doing worse than Cuba.

See also my podcast with Russ Roberts and written observations on Communist Cuba.

Update.  Gross national income takes out some of the "effect" of mainland businesses (arguably Cuba would have enjoyed mainland investment too, if it had taken another path), but is available for fewer years.  The chart below adds those in orange -- bottom line for GNI is 3-4 times rather than 4-5 times.