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The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a period of dramatic economic and population change for the Spanish Caribbean, including Puerto Rico. This note describes a unique collection of population data that sheds nuanced light on older research themes and promises to inspire new inquiries. These aggregate population data, or padrones, commissioned by the Spanish Crown and now more widely available and usable than ever before, offer details on Puerto Rico's sex, age, status, and socio-racial composition on an annual basis for the period spanning 1779 to 1802. We describe the data, their accompanying limitations, and their potential uses to advance scholarship on late-colonial Spanish America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes newly created samples of the 1910 and 1920 censuses of Puerto Rico to describe the composition and distribution of the island's households. It suggests, among other things, that Puerto Rican households were unusually large and complex --more so, in fact, than in all other documented Latin American or Caribbean cases. Household types, of which we recognize six in two main categories, varied greatly according to the race and gender of persons the census identified as their heads. The spatial distribution of households with black or mulatto heads suggests, moreover, a strong association between blackness in the early twentieth century and distinct settlement patterns characteristic of various earlier phases of island history, when enslaved Africans were among the predominant settlers. The study demonstrates a sharp rise in the proportion of nuclear households during the 1910s and suggests possible explanations based on the economic changes taking place in these years. Finally, it proposes ways to connect long-term socio-historical processes, such as those strengthening communal solidarities among rural dwellers, with certain household patterns visible in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various papers published within the issue including one on the new public use samples made from the first and second U.S. censuses of Puerto Rico of the 20th century, and another on the impact of education policies on social stratification.