Census Bureau data presentations for Puerto Rico and the Outlying Areas are different from the stateside presentations for geographic entities in several ways:
- Puerto Rico and the Outlying Areas are not part of any census region or division (see Chapter 6).
- The census data (such as population and housing) for Puerto Rico and the Outlying Areas are not included with that of the United States.
- With the exception of Puerto Rico, none of the Outlying Areas have metropolitan areas (MAs) or urbanized areas (UAs). (See Chapters 12 and 13 for more information.)
- Puerto Rico has an additional, unique level of geography to represent the Commonwealth’s subbarrios, which are subdivisions of the MCD—that is, the Census Bureau treats the subbarrios as sub-MCDs. Prior to the 1990 census, the TTPI and the Northern Mariana Islands also had sub-MCDs.
- The decennial census does not report ZIP Code data for Puerto Rico or the Outlying Areas.
The remainder of this chapter takes a brief look at the history and administrative structure of each of the six entities enumerated in the 1990 census, and then provides a comprehensive overview of their census geography. The entities are discussed in alphabetical order.
American Samoa is an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States. It consists of five major volcanic islands and two coral atolls (see Figure 7-5) that lie in the heart of Polynesia, 2,500 miles south-southwest of Honolulu and 1,800 miles north-northeast of New Zealand. It is the only U.S. jurisdiction that lies south of the equator. Tutuila Island, which contains the historic capital of Pago Pago, the seat of government at Fagatogo, and the office of the Governor at Utulei, encompasses 70 percent of American Samoa’s 77.3 square miles and over 95 percent of its 46,773 inhabitants (see Table 7-5).
Puerto Rico and the Outlying Areas7-13
