Costa Rica
4.2 points below what its income predicts · expected 41.9% at its GDP per capita
Costa Rica ranks 13 of 25 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean: 37.8% of its task time is at least partly delegable, above the world figure of 35.2% and 11.0 points below high-income countries.
| Indicator | Costa Rica | Rank in region | Highest in region | Region | High income | World | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delegability | |||||||
| ADI: task time at least partly delegable (L2–L3) | 37.8 | 13 of 25 | Puerto Rico (49.9) | 37.7 | 48.7 | 35.2 | ADI v2026.1 |
| ADI3: task time fully delegable (L3) | 3.3 | 11 of 25 | Puerto Rico (4.9) | 3.0 | 3.7 | 2.5 | ADI v2026.1 |
| ADIs: expected share of working time delegable | 31.2 | 11 of 25 | Puerto Rico (38.7) | 31.0 | 37.4 | 29.5 | ADI v2026.1 |
| Adoption | |||||||
| AI use per working-age adult (index) | 1.56 | 4 of 18 | Uruguay (1.83) | 0.96 | 2.80 | 1.53 | Anthropic Economic Index |
| Context | |||||||
| GDP per capita, PPP (constant 2021 international $) | 28,443 | 8 of 25 | Guyana (83,659) | 24,615 | 56,341 | 27,620 | World Bank WDI |
| Informal employment, % of total employment | 36.1 | 6 of 22 | Bahamas (15.5) | 53.4 | 12.5 | 50.2 | ILOSTAT |
Region: the 25 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in the atlas (World Bank regions). Delegability rows are employment-weighted means; adoption and context rows are simple means over countries with data. For informality, rank 1 is the lowest. With equal weights inside reported groups, the preregistered sensitivity check, Costa Rica’s ADI is 38.2%.
Costa Rica against the delegation divide
Each flag is a country; the dashed line is what GDP per capita alone predicts. Latin America and the Caribbean keeps its colours, the rest is grey. Costa Rica is 4.2 points below what its income predicts.
Balam Labs · Agent Delegability Index v2026.1 · balamlabs.org/adi
Who works in Costa Rica, and how delegable their tasks are
Professionals and technicians and associate professionals supply 46% of Costa Rica’s delegable task time while employing 25% of its workers.
Hover a block to read one group. Shade: the group’s ADI, light 10% to dark 85%.
| Major group | Employment, Costa Rica | World | ADI of group, Costa Rica | Points of ADI, Costa Rica |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Managers | 1.5% | 3.9% | 83.6 | 1.2 |
| 4 · Clerical support workers | 8.0% | 5.0% | 82.2 | 6.6 |
| 2 · Professionals | 14.2% | 11.2% | 69.9 | 9.9 |
| 3 · Technicians and associate professionals | 10.7% | 6.7% | 70.8 | 7.6 |
| 5 · Service and sales workers | 19.8% | 17.8% | 30.8 | 6.1 |
| 8 · Plant and machine operators and assemblers | 9.0% | 7.6% | 13.1 | 1.2 |
| 6 · Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers | 2.7% | 21.9% | 20.2 | 0.5 |
| 7 · Craft and related trades workers | 11.5% | 10.8% | 19.7 | 2.3 |
| 9 · Elementary occupations | 22.6% | 15.2% | 10.4 | 2.3 |
Barriers, weighted by its jobs
The largest gap with the world is physical presence: 69% of task weight against 72% worldwide, a lighter brake on agents.
| Barrier | Share of task weight | CRI | World |
|---|---|---|---|
| Physical presence | 69% | 72% | |
| Accountability | 27% | 26% | |
| Trust and care | 26% | 26% | |
| Access to systems | 59% | 59% |
Dashed tick: world, weighting the same tasks by world employment. A task can carry more than one barrier.
Delegable work and actual AI use
With 1.56× the world’s Claude use per working-age person, Costa Rica uses AI about as much as its delegable work would suggest (gap -0.17 standard deviations).
Balam Labs · Agent Delegability Index v2026.1 · balamlabs.org/adi
Within its region
Costa Rica sits between Belize (37.9%) and Dominican Republic (37.2%); Puerto Rico leads the region at 49.9% and Ecuador closes it at 29.3%.
| Country | ADI | % |
|---|---|---|
| Puerto Rico | 49.9 | |
| Curaçao | 48.5 | |
| Barbados | 44.8 | |
| Argentina | 43.4 | |
| Saint Lucia | 42.4 | |
| Bahamas | 42.2 | |
| Jamaica | 40.5 | |
| Chile | 40.0 | |
| Brazil | 39.9 | |
| Colombia | 38.3 | |
| Uruguay | 38.2 | |
| Belize | 37.9 | |
| Costa Rica | 37.8 | |
| Dominican Republic | 37.2 | |
| Mexico | 36.8 | |
| Paraguay | 36.2 | |
| Panama | 34.4 | |
| El Salvador | 33.6 | |
| Guyana | 33.3 | |
| Peru | 33.0 | |
| Bolivia | 31.1 | |
| Honduras | 30.9 | |
| Guatemala | 30.3 | |
| Grenada | 29.7 | |
| Ecuador | 29.3 |
Dashed line: regional employment-weighted mean, 37.7%. World: 35.2%.
Espinal Maya, Cristian, and Santiago Jiménez Londoño. 2026. ADI v2026.1: Agent Delegability Index data, code and MCP server. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23552918. Record: Costa Rica (CRI), https://balamlabs.org/adi/countries/CRI
@misc{espinal2026adidata,
title = {{ADI} v2026.1: Agent Delegability Index data, code and {MCP} server},
author = {Espinal Maya, Cristian and Jim{\'e}nez Londo{\~n}o, Santiago},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Zenodo},
version = {v2026.1},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23552918},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23552918},
note = {Record: Costa Rica (CRI)}
}Static JSON: /adi/v2026.1/country/CRI.json