scholarly journals Aging in Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Health Status Among Island Puerto Rican and Mainland U.S. Older Adults

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 1056-1078 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Pérez ◽  
Jennifer A. Ailshire
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Health Status ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Aging Research ◽  
Puerto Rican Women ◽  
Self Rated Health ◽  
Elderly Health ◽  
Older Adult Population

Objective: To characterize the health status of older island Puerto Ricans, a segment of the U.S. population that has been largely overlooked in aging research. Method: Data from the 2002 Puerto Rican Elderly Health Conditions Project and the 2002 Health and Retirement Study are used to examine differences in disease, disability, and self-rated health among island Puerto Ricans and the mainland U.S.-born older adult population. Differences are further examined by gender. Results: Island Puerto Ricans were less likely to have heart disease, stroke, lung disease, cancer, activities of daily living (ADL) limitations, and poor self-rated health, but more likely to have hypertension and diabetes. Island Puerto Rican women had worse health relative to island Puerto Rican men. Discussion: Recent challenges in the funding and provision of health care in Puerto Rico are worrisome given the large number of aging island adults, many of whom have hypertension and diabetes, two conditions that require long-term medical care.

Geographical Differentials in the Socioeconomic Status of Puerto Ricans: Human Capital Variations and Labor Market Characteristics

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1267-1290 ◽  
Author(s):  
María E. Enchautegui
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
Socioeconomic Outcomes ◽  
Puerto Rican Women ◽  
Female Headship

This article examines the role of human capital and labor market characteristics in explaining geographical and individual differentials in socioeconomic outcomes of Puerto Rican women. The better socioeconomic performance of Puerto Ricans outside the Northeast can be in part related to their larger amount of human capital. Labor market characteristics also play a role, but their effects are generally small. Net of other characteristics, Northeast residence reduces labor force participation, increases female headship, but reduces welfare use. Of all groups examined, recent migrants from Puerto Rico located in the Northeast show the poorest socioeconomic outcomes.

Rates of Cesarean Delivery Among Puerto Rican Women - Puerto Rico and the U.S. Mainland, 1992-2002

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Varela-Flores ◽  
◽  
H. Vázquez-Rivera ◽  
F. Menacker ◽  
Y. Ahmed ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Cesarean Delivery ◽  
Puerto Rican Women ◽  
The U.S

The Future of Aging Research: Should the Focus Be On Not Growing Old or Growing Old Better?

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
Debra J. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Healthy Lifestyle ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Life Stages ◽  
Lifestyle Behaviors ◽  
Aging Research ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Older Adult Population

Despite the significant increase in years that an individual can now expect to live in the 21st century, there is growing evidence that the price for greater longevity may be worsening health due to the higher prevalence of nonfatal but disabling conditions. This sobering news suggests the need for expanded scientific inquiry directed at understanding the multilevel factors that promote or prevent physical activity (PA) participation and the adoption of healthy lifestyle behaviors and the types of intervention strategies that will be most effective in positively changing behavior at different life stages. Fruitful areas of future scientific inquiry include exploring other types and intensities of PA aimed at increasing PA participation while reducing sedentary behavior, better understanding the role of the physical and social environment in promoting PA participation, and designing and evaluating multilevel PA interventions that are better tailored to the activity preferences, goals, and expectations of a diverse older adult population, and flexibly delivered in real-world settings. Finally, conducting research aimed at better differentiating normal age-associated changes from those that are disease-related will be fundamental to reversing the negative stereotypes that currently shape the public’s view of the aging process.

scholarly journals Constructing Spiritual Blackness

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Omar Ramadan-Santiago
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Identification Process ◽  
Global Construction

Abstract In this article, I address how my interlocutors, members of the Rastafari community in Puerto Rico, claim that they identify with Blackness and Africanness in a manner different from other Black-identifying Puerto Ricans. Their identification process presents a spiritual and global construction of Blackness that does not fit within the typical narratives often used to discuss Black identity in Puerto Rico. I argue that their performance of a spiritually Black identity creates a different understanding of Blackness in Puerto Rico, one that is not nation-based but rather worldwide. This construction of Blackness and Black identity allows my interlocutors to create an imagined community of Blackness and African descent that extends past Puerto Rico’s borders toward the greater Caribbean region and African continent. In the first section, I discuss how Blackness is understood and emplaced in Puerto Rico and why this construction is considered too limiting by my interlocutors. I then address their own construction of Blackness, what I refer to as “spiritual Blackness,” and how they believe it diverges from Afro-Boricua/Black Puerto Rican identity. In the final section, I direct focus to how Africa is centralized in the construction of spiritual Blackness.

The Politics of Status

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-53
Author(s):  
Amílcar Antonio Barreto
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Of The Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Party System

Puerto Ricans, US subjects since 1898, were naturalized en masse in 1917. Congress did so to eliminate the possibility of independence from the US. That citizenship is the cornerstone of island-mainland relations for those advocating a continued relationship with the United States—either in the form of the 1952 Commonwealth constitution or statehood. The epicenter of Puerto Rican partisan life remains the status question. This remarkably stable political party system featured two strong parties of near-equal strength—the pro-Commonwealth PPD and its statehood challenger, the PNP— and a small independence party, the PIP. A core feature of the PNP’s platform has been estadidad jíbara—"creole statehood.” In theory, a future State of Puerto Rico would be allowed to retain its cultural and linguistic autonomy while attaining full membership as the 51st state of the Union.

Buenaventura Lakes

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-33
Author(s):  
Simone Delerme
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
Central Florida ◽  
Country Club ◽  
Gateway Cities ◽  
Osceola County

Chapter 1 sets the scene in Osceola County, Florida. The chapter goes back to the 1970s, to the formation of an international consortium of real estate developers—“the Mexican Millionaires”—who used real estate marketing strategies and the visceral imagery of luxurious country club living to attract Puerto Ricans to the Buenaventura Lakes suburb. This historical chapter shows how instrumental these corporate partners were in fostering an awareness of Greater Orlando’s real estate opportunities on the island of Puerto Rico and in the Puerto Rican concentrated communities of New York and Chicago, and directing the flow of mainland and island Puerto Ricans towards Greater Orlando instead of the traditional gateway cities. As a result, they created one of the largest Puerto Rican-concentrated suburbs in Central Florida.

Rescued from their Invisibility: The Afro-Puerto Ricans of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century San Mateo de Cangrejos, Puerto Rico

2007 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-586 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Stark
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Main Trunk ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Fugitive Slaves

The black “root” has been systematically “uprooted” from the main “trunk” of the Puerto Rican nation.Jorge DuanyScholars who study Puerto Rico's past have struggled with the question of how to define the island’s national identity. Is the essence of Puerto Rican identity rooted in Spain, does it have its origins in Africa, in the legacy of the native Tainos, or is it a product of two or all three of these? This polemical question has yet to be resolved and remains a subject of much debate. The island's black past is often overlooked, and what has been written tends to focus on the enslaved labor force and its ties to the nineteenth-century plantation economy. Few works are specifically devoted to the study of the island's seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Afro-Puerto Rican population. Recent scholarship has begun to address this oversight. For example, the efforts of fugitive slaves and free black West Indian migrants making their way to Puerto Rico have been well documented. Yet, little is known about the number or identity of these runaways. How many slaves made their way to freedom in Puerto Rico, who were they, and where did they come from? Perhaps more importantly, what about their new lives on the island? How were they able to create a sense of belonging, both as individuals and as part of a community within the island's existing population and society? What follows strives to answer these questions by taking a closer look first at the number and identity of these fugitives, and second at how new arrivals were assimilated into their new surroundings through marriage and family formation while their integration was facilitated by participation in the local economy. Through their religious and civic activity Afro-Puerto Ricans were able to create a niche for themselves in San Juan and eventually a community of their own in Cangrejos. In doing so, they helped shape the island's national identity.

US Imperialism and Puerto Rican Needleworkers: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Women's Labor in a Deep History of Neoliberal Trade

2020 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 142-172
Author(s):  
Aimee Loiselle
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Puerto Rican Women ◽  
Us Imperialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Operation Bootstrap ◽  
A Site

AbstractIn 1898, US occupation of Puerto Rico opened possibilities for experimentation with manufacturing, investment, tariffs, and citizenship because the Treaty of Paris did not address territorial incorporation. Imperial experimentation started immediately and continued through the liberal policies of the New Deal and World War II, consistently reproducing drastic exceptions. These exceptions were neither permanent nor complete, but the rearrangements of sovereignty and citizenship established Puerto Rico as a site of potential and persistent exemption. Puerto Rican needleworkers were central to the resulting colonial industrialization-not as dormant labor awaiting outside developmental forces but as skilled workers experienced in production. Following US occupation, continental trade agents and manufacturers noted the intricate needlework of Puerto Rican women and their employment in homes and small shops for contractors across the island. Their cooptation and adaptation of this contracting system led to the colonial industrialization, generating bureaucratic, financial, and legal infrastructure later used in Operation Bootstrap, a long-term economic plan devised in the 1940s and 1950s. Labor unions and aggrieved workers contested and resisted this colonial industrialization. They advocated their own proposals and pushed against US economic policies and insular business management. Throughout these fights, the asymmetrical power of the federal government and industrial capital allowed the colonial regime to assert US sovereignty while continually realigning exemptions and redefining citizenship for liberal economic objectives. Rather than representing a weakening of the nation-state, this strong interventionist approach provided scaffolding for Operation Bootstrap, which became a model for the neoliberal projects called export processing zones (EPZs).

scholarly journals Influence of Type II Diabetes and High Depressive Symptoms on the Likelihood for Developing Activities of Daily Living (ADL) Disability and Mortality in Older Puerto Ricans

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 1079-1095 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Downer ◽  
Michael Crowe ◽  
Kyriakos S. Markides
Keyword(s):  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Type Ii Diabetes ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Psychiatric Treatment ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
Elderly Health ◽  
Adl Disability

Objective: To examine the development of activities of daily living (ADL) disability and mortality according to diabetes and high depressive symptoms among Puerto Rican adults aged 60 and older. Method: Data came from Wave I and Wave II of the Puerto Rican Elderly: Health Conditions Study ( n = 3,419). Logistic regression was used. Using insulin and receiving psychiatric treatment were proxy measures of disease severity for diabetes and depressive symptoms, respectively. Results: High depressive symptoms at baseline were associated with developing ADL disability (OR = 2.21; 95% CI = [1.68, 2.91]). Diabetes at baseline was associated with mortality at follow-up (OR = 1.72; 95% CI = [1.34, 2.19]). Baseline diabetes was associated with developing ADL disability but only for those who reported using insulin (OR = 1.69; 95% CI = [1.08, 2.61]). Participants with comorbid diabetes and high depressive symptoms had the highest odds for developing ADL disability and mortality. Discussion: Diabetes and high depressive symptoms are risk factors of developing ADL disability and mortality for older Puerto Ricans.

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