Fertility on the US-Mexico border.

ABSTRACT

PIP: The relative importance of the proximate determinants of fertility is explored in 5 populations on the US-Mexico border using Bongaarts' model. These are: Mexican nationals who do not live in the 6 northern states that border the US; Mexican nationals who live in those 6 northern Mexican states; Mexican-Americans who were born in Mexico but now reside in the 4 US states that border Mexico and who prefer to speak Spanish at home; Mexican-Americans who were born in the US, live in the 4 US states that border Mexico, identify themselves as Mexican-American or Chicanos, and prefer to speak English at home, and Anglo-Americans who were born in the US, have non-Spanish surnames, and live in the 4 US states that border Mexico. For the groups closest to natural fertility (the 2 Mexican groups), lactation, use of contraception, and marriage all were moderately important in terms of their direct effect on fertility. For the group with the lowest fertility (Anglo-American), contraceptive use was an important factor inhibiting fertility; marriage was important but not nearly as important as contraceptive use. For the 2 US Mexican-American groups, contraceptive use was an important intermediate variable, not as important for Anglo-Americans, but more important than it was for the 2 populations in Mexico. The proportion married was a moderately important factor for the Mexican-American groups. For these 5 populations the principle differences in fertility rates result from substantial differences in the use of effective contraception. Bongaarts' model proved very useful as an analytical framework in this study.