This poverty estimate for Puerto Rico for 2000 is based on the relationship of poverty rates between the United States and Puerto Rico for income year 1999 from Census 2000. We are unable to obtain confidence intervals for this estimate. Specifically, the estimate was derived by taking the ratio of the child poverty rate for Puerto Rico to the child poverty rate for United States from Census 2000 (both of these estimates reflect income year 1999). This ratio for 1999 was assumed to remain the same in 2000, and was applied to the 2000 child poverty rate for the United States to estimate the 2000 child poverty rate for Puerto Rico. This estimated 2000 poverty rate for Puerto Rico was then applied to the relevant 2001 5-17 population estimate for Puerto Rico to estimate the number of related children aged 5-17 in poverty for Puerto Rico for income year 2000. We chose to use this method, keeping the relationship between the Puerto Rico and United States related children 5-17 poverty rates consistent between 1999 and 2000, rather than a similar method that kept the relationship between the number of poor children consistent because the estimated population of children aged 5-17 in Puerto Rico went down between 2000 and 2001 whereas the population of children aged 5-17 in the United States went up. The steps used to develop the estimates are documented below.

We used the following steps to compute the number of related children aged 5 to 17 in poverty for 2000:

1. Start with the estimated poverty rates for related children aged 5-17 in the United States and Puerto Rico for income year 1999: 15.9 percent and 58.5 percent, repectively.
   
2. Calculate the ratio of the relevant poverty rates for related children aged 5-17, Puerto Rico to United States (58.5 percent/ 15.9 percent = 3.6792 percent).
   
3. Apply the ratio calculated in step 2 to the income year 2000 poverty rate for related children 5-17 for the United States (3.6792 x 14.6 percent = 53.7 percent).
   
4. Estimate the number of related children aged 5-17 from the estimate of all children aged 5-17 by applying the ratio of those two numbers from Census 2000 (784,634 / 796,695 = .9849) to the 2001 total 5-17 population estimate in Puerto Rico (.9849 x 794,941 = 782,937).
   
5. Finally the estimate for the number of related children aged 5-17 in poverty in Puerto Rico is calculated by appling the poverty rate estimate from step 3 to the estimate of the related 5-17 population from step 4 (53.7 percent x 782,937 = 420,437).

Population estimates are available for the Commonwealth as a product of the Federal-State Cooperative Population Estimates Program, produced by the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program.