Purpose

Much reproductive health research on the Latina population overlooks heterogeneity by national origin, nativity, and age and also ignores how U.S.-based populations differ from those in “sending” nations. The purpose of this study is to describe a history of adolescent birth, age at first sex, and contraceptive use at first sex in the Mexican-origin population in both the United States and Mexico.

Methods

We developed a binational dataset merging two comparable nationally representative cross-sectional surveys in the United States and Mexico and used covariate balancing propensity scores to balance the age structure of our four samples: U.S.-born Latinas of Mexican origin, foreign-born Latinas of Mexican origin, U.S.-born non-Latina Whites, and Mexican women residing in Mexico. We used a negative binomial regression and calculated the predicted probability of experiencing at least one adolescent birth for each ethnicity/nativity group, stratified by 5-year age group. We also described age and contraceptive use at first sex.

Results

Foreign-born Latinas of Mexican origin and Mexicans in Mexico had similar adjusted probabilities of reporting an adolescent birth (30.1% and 29.9%, respectively), which were higher than those of Mexican-Americans (26.2%) and U.S.-born non-Latina Whites (11.6%). History of an adolescent birth is declining across all four groups among younger ages. Differences do not appear to be driven by the timing of first sex but by contraceptive use, which is increasing among younger age groups.

Discussion

Access to and use of effective contraception rather than timing of initiation of sexual activity is a key determinant of U.S. Latina and Mexican adolescent births.

中文翻译：

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美墨边境两侧墨西哥裔妇女的青春期生殖健康结果

目的

许多关于拉丁裔人口的生殖健康研究忽视了民族血统、出生地和年龄的异质性，也忽视了美国人口与“派遣”国家人口的差异。本研究的目的是描述美国和墨西哥墨西哥裔人口的青春期生育史、初次性行为年龄和初次性行为时避孕药具的使用情况。

方法

我们开发了一个双边数据集，合并了在美国和墨西哥进行的两项具有可比性的全国代表性横断面调查，并使用协变量平衡倾向得分来平衡我们四个样本的年龄结构：美国出生的墨西哥裔拉丁裔、外国出生的墨西哥裔拉丁裔原籍、美国出生的非拉丁裔白人和居住在墨西哥的墨西哥妇女。我们使用负二项式回归并计算了每个种族/出生群体至少经历一次青春期生育的预测概率，按 5 岁年龄组分层。我们还描述了第一次性行为的年龄和避孕药具使用情况。

结果

墨西哥裔外国出生的拉丁裔和墨西哥的墨西哥人报告青春期生育的调整后概率相似（分别为 30.1% 和 29.9%），高于墨西哥裔美国人 (26.2%) 和美国出生的非拉丁裔白人（11.6%）。在所有四个年龄组中，青春期生育史都在下降。差异似乎不是由第一次性行为的时间驱动的，而是由避孕药具的使用引起的，这种情况在较年轻的年龄组中越来越多。

讨论

获得和使用有效的避孕措施而不是开始性活动的时间是美国拉丁裔和墨西哥青少年生育的关键决定因素。