D P Hogan — Page 2 | PubMed Health

PubMedDate not supplied

Women's status and infant mortality in rural Colombia.

This paper investigates the effects of maternal demographic characteristics and social and economic statuses on infant mortality in rural Colombia. Demographic characteristics include the age of the mother, parity and length of preceding interbirth interval, and sex of infant. Measures of women's status at the time of birth include education, wage labor and occupation, economic stratum, place of residence, and whether the mother is living with a husband. The life history data for the study (involving 4,928 births) were collected in 1986 from a representative sample of two cohorts of women resident in rural central Colombia. Overall differentials in infant mortality by measures of women's status are small and are in good part associated with the differing reproductive behaviors of the women and variations in breastfeeding practices. The sharp declines in infant mortality recorded in rural Colombia in recent years appear less related to improved status of women than to reductions in fertility that enhance infant survivorship and to public health interventions shared by all segments of the population.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Social and environmental factors influencing contraceptive use among black adolescents.

In 1979 survey among sexually active unmarried black adolescents from Chicago found that 28 percent of the young women and 18 percent of the young men used a contraceptive at first intercourse. Statistically significant differences in such contraceptive use among teenage women were found for three social and environmental characteristics: social class, parents' marital status and neighborhood quality. Thus, 41 percent of the young women from the highest social class used contraceptives at first intercourse, but only 17 percent of those from the lowest class did so. The proportions were 35 percent for young women from neighborhoods of high socioeconomic status and 17 percent for those from ghetto neighborhoods. Thirty-six percent of teenage women whose parents had intact marriages as of the adolescent's 11th birthday used contraceptives at first intercourse, compared with 23 percent of those from single-parent and divorced families. Among males, social class was the only one of these three characteristics that was statistically significant; 32 percent of adolescents from the highest class and 11 percent from the lowest practiced contraception at first intercourse. For teenagers of both sexes, career aspirations were of marginal statistical significance in the practice of contraception. Thirty-six percent of young women with high aspirations used contraceptives at first intercourse and 19 percent of those with low aspirations did so. Only four percent of the young men with low career aspirations used contraceptives, compared with 25 percent of those with high aspirations. Number of siblings, parental supervision of dating and having a sister who had become a teenage mother showed no association with contraceptive use.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Adolescent↗