Puerto Rico’s $300-an-Hour Demographer Catches Heat From Bondholders

Some of the most contentious numbers in Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy are population projections: How many taxpayers will be living on the island 10, 20, or 50 years from now? Any attempt to gauge the commonwealth’s fiscal prospects—and hence its ability to pay bondholders—depends in great measure on the reliability of those figures. Yet the consultant hired to calculate them has no demography degree, speaks little Spanish, and lives in Hong Kong.

Lyman Stone, 27, whose last full-time job was as an economist at the U.S. Agriculture Department, has interests that range from fertility in the Northern Mariana Islands to gentrification in Cincinnati. These are among the topics he’s addressed in a self-published blog titled “In a State of Migration.” Last year, the federal panel tasked with turning around the island’s finances took a chance on the outsider, who had been disseminating—for free—the internet’s best-read Puerto Rico population projections.