The population of Puerto Rico has been shaped by native American settlement, European colonization especially under the Spanish Empire, slavery and economic migration.

The highest population was reached around the year 2000 (3.8 million) and has been decreasing since, due to low fertility and emigration.

Since the late 18th century Puerto Ricans have called themselves some variation of boricua, borincano and borinqueño to embrace their indigenous identity.

The Taíno population dwindled due to disease, tribal warfare, and forced labor, so the Spanish began importing large numbers of slaves from Africa.

Although the vast majority of settlers came from Spain, Catholics from France, Ireland, Corsica, Italy, Germany and other European countries were also granted land by Spain as one of the provisions of the Real Cédula de Gracias de 1815 (Royal Decree of Graces of 1815).

These immigrants were allowed to settle on the island, with a certain amount of free land and enslaved persons granted to them.

The first large group of Jews to settle in Puerto Rico were European refugees fleeing German–occupied Europe in the late 1930s.

According to the 2020 census, by ancestry or birth, there were 53,677 Dominicans, 11,701 Cubans, 5,628 Spaniards, 5,010 Colombians, 4,975 Mexicans, 3,131 Venezuelans, 1,366 Peruvians, and 1,331 Argentineans.

[9] There were also 29,913 English, 9,700 Italians, 6,307, Germans, 5,024 French, 4,561 Irish, 1,361 Portuguese, and 8,556 all other European-origin groups, a large portion is made up of white Americans of such ancestries.

[9] Some illegal immigrants, particularly from Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Cuba use Puerto Rico as a temporary stop-over point to get to the US mainland.

Starting in the post-World War II period waves of Puerto Ricans moved to the continental United States, particularly to New York City, Yonkers, Buffalo, Rochester New York; Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, and Camden, New Jersey; Providence, Rhode Island; Boston, Springfield, Massachusetts; Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut; Cleveland, Ohio; Orlando, Jacksonville, and Tampa, Miami, Florida; Philadelphia, Allentown, Reading, Pennsylvania; and Chicago, Illinois.

[17] Years Years Source: UN World Population Prospects[18] In the late 1700s, Puerto Rico had laws like the Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar where a person of mixed ancestry could be considered legally white so long as they could prove that at least one person per generation in the last four generations had also been legally white.

[24] A strong European immigration wave and large importation of slaves from Africa helped increase the population of Puerto Rico sixfold during the 19th century.

[citation needed] The Naturalization Act of 1870, passed during Reconstruction, allowed for peoples of African descent to become U.S. Citizens but it excluded other nonwhites.

Puerto Ricans, excluding those of obvious African ancestry, were like most Hispanics formally classified as White under U.S.

[citation needed] The first census by the United States in 1899 reported a population of 953,243 inhabitants, 61.8% of them classified as white, 31.9% as mixed, and 6.3% as black.

The only category that remained constant over time was white, even as other racial labels shifted greatly—from "colored" to "Black", "mulatto" and "other".

[citation needed] Puerto Ricans, on average, have genetic contributions from Europeans, West Africans, and Native Americans of approximately 66%, 18%, and 16%, respectively.

Their highest concentrations are in Culebra (10.8%), Vieques (8.0%), Rincón (5.1%), Dorado (3.4%), Luquillo (2.9%), San Juan (2.2%) Guaynabo (2.1%) and Humacao (2.0%).

[32] In a study done on Puerto Rican women (of all races) born on the island but living in New York by Carolina Bonilla, Mark D. Shriver and Esteban Parra in 2004, the ancestry proportions corresponding to the three parental populations were found to be 53.3±2.8% European, 29.1±2.3% West African, and 17.6±2.4% Native American based on autosomal ancestry informative markers.

An Associated Press article in March 2014 stated that "more than 70 percent of whom identify themselves as Catholic" but provided no source for this information.

[39] The church was forbidden from ringing its bell, using its front door, or holding services in Spanish until 1898, when American troops landed in Ponce and established freedom of worship.

Puerto Rico is the only Caribbean island in which the Conservative, Reform and Orthodox Jewish movements are represented.

According to some sources, starting in about 1840, there have been attempts to create a quasi-indigenous Taíno identity in rural areas of Puerto Rico.