Volume 28 - Article 41 | Pages 1199–1212  

Patterns of contraceptive use among Mexican-origin women

By Kari White, Joseph E. Potter

Abstract

Background: Mexican women in the United States (US) have higher rates of fertility compared to other ethnic groups and women in Mexico. Whether variation in women’s access to family planning services or patterns of contraceptive use contributes to this higher fertility has received little attention.

Objective: We explore Mexican women’s contraceptive use, taking into account women’s place in the reproductive life course.

Methods: Using nationally representative samples from the US (National Survey of Family Growth) and Mexico (Encuesta National de la Dinámica Demográfica), we compared the parity-specific frequency of contraceptive use and fertility intentions for non-migrant women, foreign-born Mexicans in the US, US-born Mexicans, and whites.

Results: Mexican women in the US were less likely to use IUDs and more likely to use hormonal contraception than women in Mexico. Female sterilization was the most common method among higher parity women in both the US and Mexico, however, foreign-born Mexicans were less likely to be sterilized, and the least likely to use any permanent contraceptive method. Although foreign-born Mexicans were slightly less likely to report that they did not want more children, differences in method use remained after controlling for women’s fertility intentions.

Conclusions: At all parities, foreign-born Mexicans used less effective methods. These findings suggest that varying access to family planning services may contribute to variation in women’s contraceptive use.

Comments: Future studies are needed to clarify the extent to which disparities in fertility result from differences in contraceptive access.

Author’s Affiliation

• Kari White - University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), United States of America EMAIL
• Joseph E. Potter - University of Texas at Austin, United States of America EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Age, education, and earnings in the course of Brazilian development: Does composition matter?
Volume 28 - Article 20

Similar articles in Demographic Research

Partnership life courses and completed fertility in Spain
Volume 54 - Article 29    | Keywords: feature selection, fertility, life course, partnership trajectories, Spain

Spatial perspective on environmental migration: Empirical insights from a spatiotemporal approach in the United States, 1970–2010
Volume 54 - Article 27    | Keywords: environmental migration, migration, net migration rate, rural-urban inequality, spatial analysis, United States of America

Harmonised fertility histories in four British longitudinal cohort studies
Volume 54 - Article 18    | Keywords: cohort studies, fertility, harmonised data, United Kingdom

A flexible model for reconstructing education-specific fertility rates: The case of sub-Saharan Africa
Volume 54 - Article 12    | Keywords: Bayesian demography, Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), education, fertility, fertility rates, sub-Saharan Africa

Brothers, sisters, and the legacy of sibship: Childhood coresiding siblings and late-life cognitive decline in the United States
Volume 54 - Article 8    | Keywords: cognitive decline, cumulative disadvantage, family structure, resource dilution, siblings, United States of America