States, localities, territories, and tribes are receiving assistance from several recent pieces of legislation designed to help address the COVID-19 health emergency and its economic fallout, though the amounts provided to them fall well short of the need, given the magnitude of the challenges and the sharp drop in government revenues.[1] But probably nowhere is the need greater than in Puerto Rico, which unlike other parts of the country entered the pandemic following well over a decade of virtually uninterrupted economic decline coupled with devastating natural disasters and an unprecedented, ongoing bankruptcy process. Puerto Rico will need both immediate and longer-term tools to fight the pandemic’s health and economic effects and foster a return of economic growth and opportunity.

Among Puerto Rico’s greatest economic challenges are chronically high poverty, especially among children, and low labor-force participation. Yet, Puerto Rico residents do not have access to the same assistance that is available to people facing such challenges in the mainland United States. The federal funding for programs in Puerto Rico that correspond to the mainland’s federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income programs is capped at insufficient levels that limit support to well below the levels provided on the mainland. And while Puerto Rico has adopted its own Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), that credit provides a fraction of what the federal EITC (which isn’t available to Puerto Rico residents) provides, while the Child Tax Credit is available in Puerto Rico only to households with three or more children.