Costa Rica: The Next Decade

The Bottom Line

Costa Rica has spent seventy years being the exception in its neighborhood — no army since 1948, a functioning welfare state, an unbroken democracy, and a brand ("Pura Vida") that is more real than most national slogans. In 2026 that exception is intact but fraying at two edges at once. The economy is genuinely strong: the IMF's 2026 Article IV review notes growth accelerated to about 4.6% in 2025 and projects roughly 3.6–3.8% for 2026 — one of the healthier prints in Latin America — while inflation is low and the currency has been firm. But the security map has darkened, with 872 homicides in 2025 (about 16.4 per 100,000), near the country's modern peak, and politics just lurched: in February 2026 voters elected Laura Fernández, a populist ally of outgoing president Rodrigo Chaves, and handed her party the first single-party legislative majority since 1990.

Our thesis: Costa Rica is the most institutionally reassuring country in this Central American comparison and one of the best places in the Americas to grow older well — a near-universal healthcare system, a clean grid, a warm and settled expat infrastructure, and a culture that treats belonging as the default. Its automation-era hand is quietly good: a proven high-value manufacturing and services base that automation can deepen rather than gut. But it is not the low-drama tropical spreadsheet the brochures sell. It carries a real and rising crime problem, an aging population that will squeeze the pension and health systems, a fiscal path with little slack, and a coastal-property boom pricing out locals. Come for the stability, the community, and the healthcare, learn Spanish, base yourself thoughtfully, and Costa Rica over-delivers on the things that make a move stick. Come expecting a risk-free paradise and the details will surprise you.

Medtech, Nearshoring, and the Automation Decade

Costa Rica's automation-era position is stronger than its size suggests, because it long ago stopped competing on cheap labor and moved up the value chain. It is now the world's leading per-capita exporter of medical devices — the sector reached roughly 48% of exports and helped drive 16% export growth in 2025 — and hosts more than 70 medtech multinationals (Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Abbott and peers) alongside a deep nearshoring base in 68 free-trade zones. In October 2024 it became the first country in Central America to adopt a National AI Strategy (ENIA 2024–2027), with an action plan issued in August 2025 and the INTE/ISO/IEC 42001 AI-management standard formalized in March 2026 — putting it ahead of the region on governance, if not yet on compute.

The exposure cuts the other way too, and 2025 delivered the warning shot: Intel announced it would close its Costa Rican chip assembly-and-test plant, consolidating to Malaysia and Vietnam, with Pfizer and Qorvo also restructuring. A small economy dependent on a handful of anchor multinationals is one boardroom decision away from a regional shock, and the more routine assembly and back-office work that AI and automation touch first is exactly the layer Costa Rica has been trying to graduate out of. The bet for the decade is whether it keeps climbing — into device design, clinical services, software, and AI-adjacent work its bilingual talent can do — or whether automation and reshoring hollow the middle before the top layer is deep enough to carry the country.

Social Fabric, Belonging, and Why People Actually Stay

Belonging is where a Costa Rica move is won or lost, and the country scores high. Pura Vida is not just tourism copy: it names a real cultural preference for ease, warmth, and non-confrontation that makes daily life gentle and newcomers feel welcomed rather than tolerated. Ticos are famously courteous and family-centered, and the country's long history as a destination means integration paths are well-worn — you are not the first foreigner your neighbors have met, and the social scaffolding (clubs, churches, sports leagues, volunteer networks, bilingual schools) already exists. For an expat weighing loneliness — the single biggest predictor of whether a move sticks — Costa Rica is one of the more forgiving landing pads in our Future Outlooks.

The expat community is large, layered, and geographically real. Estimates of Americans alone range from roughly 50,000 to over 120,000, clustered in three distinct worlds: the temperate Central Valley (San José, Escazú, Santa Ana, Heredia, Grecia, Atenas) where bilingual professional life and expat institutions run deepest; the beach-and-nomad belt of Guanacaste (Tamarindo, Nosara, Flamingo); and the wilder Southern Zone and Caribbean coast. You can find your people in more than one climate — cool mountain towns or hot Pacific beaches — which matters more for belonging than most newcomers realize.

The practical consequences for belonging:

• The Central Valley is the softest landing. Bilingualism is highest, professional-class Ticos in San José, Heredia and Alajuela are often fully bilingual, expat services are mature, and you are minutes from CCSS hospitals and international airports. It is where integration is easiest and where a life beyond the expat bubble is most reachable.
• Spanish is still the difference between visitor and resident. English is common in the Central Valley and the tourist coast and thin elsewhere. You can start social life in English, but citizenship (basic Spanish is required), real neighborly life, and dealing with the bureaucracy all run through Spanish — and Costa Rican Spanish is clear and friendly to learn.
• The coasts are where the price friction lives. Guanacaste's boom has pushed some beach towns into openly gentrified territory (see below), and with it comes a subtler social cost: enclaves where foreigners mostly meet foreigners. The most durable settlers are the ones who resist the bubble — learn the language, spend locally, and put down roots in a community rather than a resort.

The loneliness math here is low-to-moderate, and highly location-dependent. In the Central Valley and established expat towns it is among the lowest we have found in the Future Outlooks; in a gated coastal development it can be surprisingly high, because a bubble is still a bubble even in paradise. When it is easy to live anywhere and speak to almost no one, Costa Rica's dense, in-person, family-first sociability is precisely the asset money can't manufacture — but only if you choose a place that lets you into it.

The Economic Model: Chips, Catheters, and a Services Ascent

Costa Rica runs one of Latin America's most successful high-value-added export models, built deliberately over three decades from the 1997 Intel investment onward. Today the engine is medical devices, business services, and tourism, anchored in the free-trade-zone system that CINDE and the FTZ network have made the country's growth spine. Growth of roughly 3.6–3.8% projected for 2026 after ~4.6% in 2025 is genuinely strong for the region, with low inflation and firm investment — but the IMF flags that the gains concentrate inside the FTZ economy while the domestic, "outside-the-zone" economy grows more slowly and informally.

That duality is the structural story. The FTZ layer is world-class, export-oriented, and dollarized; the domestic layer carries higher informality, lower productivity, and the tax burden the export zones are largely exempt from. The Intel assembly-plant closure is the cautionary tale: even a marquee anchor can relocate its lowest-value functions overnight, and a small economy feels it fast. The resilient response — which Costa Rica is genuinely pursuing — is to keep climbing: Intel retains higher-value R&D and services here, medtech keeps moving toward design and complex manufacturing, and the services-export and AI-strategy push aims at work that is harder to automate or offshore.

On the displacement-versus-reskilling question, Costa Rica's math is favorable by regional standards but not risk-free. Its advantages — a bilingual, educated, US-timezone workforce; a mature FTZ platform; an early AI policy; political stability multinationals prize — position it to absorb AI as a productivity tailwind in medtech, services, and design. The risk is that automation erodes the assembly and BPO rungs faster than the economy adds high-value ones, and that the benefits accrue inside the zones while the domestic majority watches. Whether Costa Rica converts its head start into broad-based gains is the central economic bet of settling here.

Governance: Deep Democracy, Newly Populist, State Present but Stretched

Costa Rica is the strongest institutional bet in this comparison. It is one of the oldest continuous democracies in the Americas, abolished its military in 1948, has independent courts and a free press, and runs elections cleanly. State presence is real across the small, well-connected national territory — this is not a country with ungoverned interiors. That is the durable foundation, and it is genuinely rare in the region.

The 2026 election introduced a new variable. Laura Fernández won in the first round with 48.5%, extending the movement of outgoing president Rodrigo Chaves — a combative populist who has repeatedly clashed with the press, the courts, and the country's traditionally consensual institutions. Her party's 31-of-57 legislative majority is the first single-party majority since 1990, ending decades of coalition governance. For a country whose stability has rested partly on the friction of divided power, concentrated control is a double-edged tool: it could deliver overdue reform (taxes, security, the CCSS) or erode the checks that made Costa Rica exceptional. Which it does is the governance question of the decade.

For a settler, the translation is: your rights, courts, contracts, and vote sit inside a functioning, high-trust democracy — a real asset when you are committing capital and years. But the bureaucracy is slow and paper-heavy (residency and CCSS enrollment routinely take months and reward hiring a good abogado/tramitador), and the state is being stretched by a security surge it was not built to fight. Watch how the new majority governs: reformist and institutional, or confrontational and personalist. That posture, more than any policy detail, will shape the country you'd be joining.

The Fiscal and Tax Trajectory

Costa Rica pulled off a hard fiscal turnaround this decade. After a debt scare, it ran primary surpluses (about 0.9% of GDP in 2025) and stabilized central-government debt near 60% of GDP — disciplined by a constitutional fiscal rule and an IMF program, and now backstopped by a precautionary Flexible Credit Line, an instrument the Fund reserves for its stronger performers. That is a materially better fiscal starting point than most of Latin America, and a real reassurance for anyone settling long-term.

The tax question for settlers is genuinely favorable — with a caveat about the future. Costa Rica runs a territorial tax system: only Costa Rican-source income is taxed, and foreign income — including remote work for foreign clients — is generally outside the net. The Digital Nomad Visa explicitly exempts foreign-earned income even past the 183-day mark, and a 2026 reform added a 25% flat deduction for independent workers. This is one of the cleaner legitimate lifestyle-and-tax combinations in the hemisphere. But do not read it as permanent: an aging population, a stretched CCSS, rising security costs, and OECD/global pressure on preferential regimes all point toward heavier future taxation, and the FTZ exemptions that power the export economy are a recurring target of reform debate. The honest framing: Costa Rica is a genuine territorial-tax advantage today and a lifestyle play first — structure conservatively, get local advice, and don't assume the current settings are locked for a decade.

Cost of Living, Housing, and Infrastructure

Costa Rica is no longer cheap by Central American standards — it is mid-priced with pockets of genuine expense, and that is part of its appeal (you pay for stability, healthcare, and safety-relative-to-neighbors) and part of its tension. A comfortable single settler runs roughly $1,600–$3,500 a month; coastal expats commonly spend $2,500–$4,000+. The Central Valley is markedly better value than the beach towns, where a foreign-currency premium has taken hold.

The infrastructure story is one of concentrated competence. The Central Valley's healthcare, connectivity, and services are genuinely good; the electricity is clean and reliable; and San José's airports keep the US a short hop away. The persistent gaps are roads and logistics (long a drag on competitiveness), water stress in the dry northwest during intensifying dry seasons, and the reality that the further you get from the Central Valley, the more you trade services and medical access for nature. "Moving to Costa Rica" realistically means choosing between a well-serviced highland life and a beautiful-but-remote coastal one.

Energy, Climate, and Resource Resilience

Costa Rica's grid is the envy of the region. In 2025 the country generated 98.6% of its electricity from renewables — hydro, geothermal, wind, biomass, and solar — covering nearly all domestic demand with clean power and even exporting surplus. For the data-center and manufacturing question, a clean, stable grid is a real asset, and the geothermal and hydro base gives Costa Rica firmer renewable power than solar-and-wind-dependent peers. It is a credible clean-compute and green-manufacturing pitch few small countries can match.

The caveats are climate and water, not carbon. The hydro-heavy grid is exposed to drought: intensifying El Niño dry seasons periodically stress reservoirs and push the country toward costlier thermal backup, and the northwest (Guanacaste) faces real and worsening water scarcity even as it builds out resorts and residential developments — a collision between the tourism boom and the aquifer that will define the coast's decade. Costa Rica is biodiverse and water-rich overall (its conservation record is world-class), but it is also exposed to hurricanes, flooding, landslides on its mountain roads, and sea-level and reef stress on its coasts. The resilience picture is strong on energy, mixed on water, and increasingly a planning question in the fast-growing northwest.

Education, Talent, and Raising Future-Fit Kids

Costa Rica's human-capital story is the foundation of everything else. Decades of investing military savings into education produced high literacy, a strong public university system (the Universidad de Costa Rica and the Instituto Tecnológico among the region's better institutions), and the bilingual technical workforce that made the FTZ and medtech economy possible. This is why nearshoring works here and why the AI strategy has real talent to build on. The weakness is the same duality as the economy: public-school quality and access vary, and the pipeline into the high-value zones is narrower than the country needs.

For expat families, the Central Valley offers a strong roster of international and bilingual schools — American, British, and IB options around San José, Escazú, and Heredia — at fees well below the US or Western Europe, and they are the practical path for most foreign families. Outside the Central Valley and a few coastal hubs, international options thin quickly. In an automation decade, Costa Rica's advantage is a genuinely educated, bilingual, tech-adjacent youth cohort plugged into multinational employers; the risk is that automation widens the gap between the FTZ-ready and everyone else. The honest posture for a family: the Central Valley with an international school is excellent value and future-fit; relying on the rural public system is a bigger gamble.

Healthcare and Demographic Resilience

Healthcare is Costa Rica's crown jewel and, simultaneously, its slow-moving fiscal problem. The CCSS ("la Caja") delivers near-universal public coverage that residents buy into for a modest income-based contribution, and it consistently produces life expectancy around 80–81 — comparable to far richer countries — alongside a strong, affordable private sector that makes the country a medical-tourism destination. For retirees especially, the healthcare-per-dollar proposition is among the best anywhere: enroll in the Caja, keep private insurance for speed, and you are covered well and cheaply. This is a core reason people who intend to try Costa Rica end up staying.

The demographic backdrop is turning fast, and it reshapes more of this decision than the crime headlines. Costa Rica's fertility rate has collapsed to roughly 1.3 children per woman, far below replacement, while the over-65 share (about 11.7% today) is set to reach one in four by 2050. That is a slow-motion squeeze on exactly the two systems settlers rely on — the CCSS health network and the public pension — as a shrinking workforce supports a growing retired population. The government has a healthy-aging strategy through 2026 and secured a $250 million IDB loan to strengthen elder- and long-term-care, but the underlying math is unforgiving. Over ten years this reshapes the fiscal picture, the healthcare bill, and the case that immigration — the very inflow that keeps the Caja's contributor base up — is part of the country's future, not a threat to it. For a settling retiree, the practical read: the system is excellent now, will be under real strain in the 2030s, and is a reason to hold private coverage and watch reform, not a reason to stay away.

Cultural Openness: AI, Foreigners, Work, and Family

Costa Rica is among the most open societies in this comparison on the axes that matter to a settler. Toward technology and enterprise it is pragmatic and ambitious — an early national AI strategy, a multinational-friendly business culture, deep familiarity with remote and nearshored work, and a formal Digital Nomad Visa. Remote work and entrepreneurship fit naturally, and the coworking-and-coliving infrastructure in the Central Valley and Guanacaste is mature and internationally networked. It is a country that has spent thirty years learning how to host foreign companies and foreign residents.

Toward foreigners, Costa Rica is welcoming by long habit, with the honest caveat that the coastal boom has created localized friction over prices and displacement — aimed at the price shock and the enclave dynamic, not at foreigners as people. A settler who learns Spanish, integrates, and spends locally will find warmth almost everywhere; one who treats a beach town as a cheap backdrop will meet the cooler edge of the Pura Vida welcome. Socially, Costa Rica is family-centered, historically Catholic but increasingly liberal in the cities (same-sex marriage is legal since 2020), non-confrontational, and safe-feeling in the well-serviced areas. Family life is valued, and in the Central Valley it is safe, rich, and well-supported. The friction points — the security surge, slow bureaucracy, coastal gentrification, and rough roads — are navigable, and the human ease on the other side is the reason the country over-delivers on belonging.

Geopolitical Position: Neutral, US-Aligned, and Newly a Corridor

Costa Rica's geopolitics have long been an asset: militarily neutral, diplomatically respected, closely aligned with the United States on trade and values, and free of the interstate-conflict risk that shadows other regions. It sits inside CAFTA-DR, is an OECD member (since 2021 — a genuine mark of institutional quality), and has positioned itself as a stable, rule-of-law nearshoring partner exactly as US firms pull supply chains closer to home. For the supply-chain decade, that alignment is mostly a tailwind: it supports medtech, services, and the friend-shoring flows that are Costa Rica's brightest card.

The offsetting exposure is the one now driving its crime problem. Costa Rica produces no drugs but sits directly on the cocaine corridor between South America and North America and Europe, and that transit role has turned it into contested territory: the number of criminal organizations reportedly grew from about 35 to 340 over a decade, driving the homicide surge and rising extortion. This is the geopolitics of geography, not of armies — a slow-burn security problem imported by the drug trade, compounded by an under-resourced police and judicial system. How the new government responds — institutional reform and cooperation, or heavy-handed populist theater — is the security variable that most affects daily settler life over the next ten years.

What Costa Rica Is Doing vs. What It Should Be Doing

Doing well:

• Running a near-total renewable grid (98.6% in 2025) with firm geothermal and hydro — a genuine clean-compute and green-manufacturing advantage.
• Building the world's leading per-capita medical-device export economy and a mature, OECD-grade nearshoring platform in 68 free-trade zones.
• Passing the first National AI Strategy in Central America (ENIA 2024–2027) and adopting the ISO/IEC 42001 AI-management standard early.
• Sustaining a deep democracy, near-universal healthcare (the CCSS), and a warm, integration-friendly social fabric that punch far above the country's income level.
• Repairing the public finances — primary surpluses, stabilized ~60% debt, an IMF Flexible Credit Line reserved for strong performers.

Should be doing:

• Confronting the security surge with institutional capacity — funding police and courts and attacking the transit economy — before drug-corridor violence dents the safety premium that underpins the whole expat proposition.
• Preparing for the aging bill now — reforming the CCSS and pension math while the demographic window is still partly open, not after the 2030s crunch arrives.
• Broadening the export miracle beyond the zones — reducing informality and pulling the domestic economy up to FTZ-level productivity so the AI/medtech gains are shared, not enclaved.
• Governing the coastal boom and its water — managing Guanacaste's development against a real and worsening aquifer constraint, and protecting locals from displacement so the foreign inflow stays a net positive.
• Using the rare single-party majority for reform, not confrontation — spending the mandate on taxes, security, and the Caja rather than on eroding the checks that made Costa Rica the region's exception.

Deciding Between Costa Rica and Its Real Peers

The realistic choice is Costa Rica versus Panama versus Mexico, with Portugal the out-of-region option for retirees comparing warm, democratic, healthcare-rich bases. Costa Rica wins decisively on institutional depth and belonging: it is the oldest continuous democracy in the group, an OECD member, and the easiest of the three to integrate into socially, with a near-universal public health system peers cannot match per dollar. It loses on cost, where it is now the priciest of the three, and it sits in the middle on safety — its roughly 16 homicides per 100,000 are below Mexico's national rate but well above Panama's, and rising.

In the numbers a mover weighs: a comfortable single-person month runs about $1,600–3,500 in Costa Rica (more on the coast), roughly $1,500–2,500 in Panama, and $1,000–1,800 across much of Mexico. On tax, Costa Rica and Panama are both territorial — foreign income is generally untaxed, and both court remote workers, though Panama's dollarised economy and Friendly Nations route give it the faster, cheaper residency, while Costa Rica's Digital Nomad Visa adds an explicit foreign-income exemption; Mexico taxes residents on worldwide income but offers easy temporary residency and the lowest cost. On healthcare, Costa Rica's CCSS-plus-private combination is the standout for the price, Panama's private care in the capital is strong but its public tier thinner, and Mexico's excellent private hospitals sit beside an uneven public system. The clean read: choose Costa Rica for stability, healthcare, and community; Panama for the dollar, the territorial tax, banking, and a quicker residency; Mexico for cost, size, and proximity to the United States if you can navigate its security geography.

Implications by Expat Type

Digital nomads: Costa Rica is one of the cleaner remote-work bases in the hemisphere — a formal Digital Nomad Visa, an explicit foreign-income tax exemption past 183 days, mature coworking, a clean grid, and genuine social warmth. The caveats are cost (higher than its neighbors), the coastal gentrification you're part of, and a security map that rewards city-and-town-smart caution. Verdict: excellent for stability and lifestyle; base in the Central Valley or a serious town, integrate, and it repays you.

Families: Strong in the Central Valley — safe in the well-serviced areas, superb healthcare value, warm and family-centric culture, good international schools, and a gentle Spanish on-ramp. Constraints: cost, the security surge, and thin options outside the center. Verdict: one of the best places in the Americas to raise kids well and affordably, if you base in the highland core and do your homework on town and school.

Retirees: This is Costa Rica's flagship case. The Pensionado route is proven, the CCSS-plus-private healthcare combination is world-class per dollar, the climate and community are hard to beat, and territorial tax spares foreign pensions. The offsets are rising costs, the aging-system strain arriving in the 2030s, and the need for Spanish and security awareness. Verdict: outstanding for adaptable retirees who prize healthcare, stability, and belonging; hold private insurance and watch CCSS reform.

Students: Costa Rica's top universities are regional players with real strength in the sciences and a live sustainability and tech scene, and clear Spanish makes it an easy immersion base. Verdict: a solid option, especially for STEM, environmental studies, Spanish immersion, and Latin American studies.

Investors and founders: A stable, OECD-member, clean-energy rule-of-law economy with a proven FTZ platform, a bilingual talent pool, and a nearshoring tailwind — against a backdrop of the Intel-style anchor fragility, higher costs than regional peers, a security surge, and a new populist majority. Verdict: high-quality for medtech, services, clean-manufacturing, and AI-adjacent operators who value stability over the lowest cost; not the play for pure labor arbitrage.

Tax optimizers and global citizens: Costa Rica's territorial system and Digital Nomad exemption make it one of the more legitimate lifestyle-tax combinations in the Americas today — genuinely useful, and cleaner than most. But the fiscal and demographic pressures point toward a heavier future, and the FTZ regime is a reform target. Verdict: a real and current advantage; treat it as a lifestyle-first move with a favorable tax overlay, not a permanent guarantee, and get local advice before you rely on it.

Three Scenarios for 2031–2036

Signals We’re Watching

• If the homicide rate has not started bending down from its ~16 per 100,000 peak by 2027, treat the security surge as structural rather than cyclical, weight the well-serviced Central Valley more heavily, and price town-and-street-smart caution into any coastal plan (check OIJ figures and InSight Crime).
• If the Fernández single-party majority moves against the courts, press, or CCSS rather than spending its mandate on tax, security, and pension reform by 2027, downgrade the institutional premium that underpins the whole proposition (check governance and press-freedom reporting).
• If CCSS and pension reform has not visibly advanced by 2028 as the over-65 share climbs toward one in four by 2050, price a heavier future health-and-tax bill and hold private coverage rather than lean on the public system alone (check CCSS and the IDB healthy-aging program).
• If Guanacaste's water stress keeps colliding with continued coastal development without a credible plan by 2028, reprice northwestern coastal property and treat the aquifer as the binding constraint on the region's decade (check ICE/AyA water data and development reporting).
• If medtech and services have not visibly absorbed the Intel exit and kept growing by 2027, downgrade the anchor-tenant resilience case and the "keeps climbing the value chain" thesis (check PROCOMER and CINDE export data — disbursed activity, not announcements).

The Settlement Verdict

Plant roots if: you are moving for stability, healthcare, climate, and belonging, and you want the reassurance of a real democracy, a clean grid, and a settled expat infrastructure. Costa Rica offers the best institutional foundation in this Central American comparison, a healthcare-per-dollar proposition that is genuinely world-class, a warm and integration-friendly culture, and a territorial-tax advantage that is real today. If you base yourself in the Central Valley or a serious community, learn Spanish, integrate beyond the enclave, and hold private health coverage, Costa Rica over-delivers on the things that actually make expat moves stick: safety-relative-to-neighbors, community, and a good old age. In an age when you can live anywhere and speak to almost no one, Costa Rica's dense, family-first, in-person life is not a soft benefit — it is the whole point.

Stay flexible if: your plan depends on rock-bottom cost, a risk-free tropical brochure, or a coastal-property windfall — or if you'd be settling into a gated beach enclave where the bubble is real and the water and security questions are sharpest. Rent before you buy. Track two things before you commit: whether the new single-party government reforms taxes, security, and the CCSS or spends its mandate confronting institutions, and whether the homicide curve bends down rather than up. Those two facts, more than any Pura Vida afternoon, decide which Costa Rica you'd be settling into.

Costa Rica is the most reassuring place in this comparison to grow older and belong, and quietly one of the better-positioned for the automation era — clean-powered, high-value, bilingual, and institutionally sound. It is also pricier, less safe, and more demographically pressured than its serene brand admits. Bring the Spanish, choose your zone with care, hold your health coverage, and it will give you more stability, healthcare, and human ease per dollar than almost anywhere in the Americas.

Sources & Further Reading

• IMF — 2026 Article IV Consultation & FCL Mid-Term Review, Costa Rica
• IMF — Staff Concluding Statement, 2026 Article IV Mission
• 2026 Costa Rican general election — results overview
• NPR — Populist conservative Laura Fernández wins Costa Rica's election
• Americas Quarterly — Reaction: Laura Fernández Wins Big in Costa Rica
• OECD.AI — Costa Rica National AI Policy (ENIA 2024–2027)
• Tico Times — Costa Rica's medical devices lead 2025 exports
• Nearshore Americas — Free-trade zones become Costa Rica's key growth engine
• Tico Times — Intel to close Costa Rica assembly facility
• Tico Times — Costa Rica closed 2025 with 98.6% renewable electricity
• Costa Rica's homicide rate in 2025 — data overview
• Tico Times — How organized crime surged in Costa Rica
• Tico Times — Costa Rica faces mounting pressure as its population ages
• World Economics — Costa Rica fertility rate
• WhereToEmigrate — Costa Rica tax system for expats, 2026
• Citizen Remote — Costa Rica Digital Nomad Visa guide, 2026
• TheLatinvestor — Guanacaste expat & real-estate guide, 2026
• Costa Rica Immigration — Cost of living in Costa Rica, 2026
• Americans in Costa Rica — community overview