Mexican Americans are the fastest-growing minority group in the United States, and their incidence of low-birthweight (LBW) infants (less than 2500 g) reportedly is higher than for Mexican-born women. The investigators carried out a population-based study of Illinois birth certificates for singleton Mexican-American infants having Mexican-born mothers for the years 1989-1991. The goal was to determine whether the duration of generational resident in the United States correlates with pregnancy outcomes. The study population included 2203 first-generation Mexican-American women and 4192 U.S.-born, second-or higher-generation women. They were compared with 39,050 Mexican-born women.First-generation U.S.-born Mexican American women had the lowest mean infant birth weight and the highest rates of LBW and very LBW (VLBW) infants weighing less than 1500 g at birth. Birth weight patterns for second-or higher-generation Mexican-American women were similar to those of Mexican-American women. LBW infants were born to 7.5% of first-generation Mexican-American women, to 6.1% of second-or higher-generation women, and to 5.1% of Mexican-born women. The relative risk figures for having an LBW infant were 1.4 and 1.2, respectively. Among U.S.-born women having 1 or more high-risk factors (age less than 20 years; less than 12 years of education; being unmarried; high parity; inadequate prenatal care), first-generation and second-or higher-generation U.S.-born women had respective infant LBW rates of 8.3% and 6.5%. The figure for Mexican-born women was 5.2%. The respective relative risk figures were 1.6 and 1.2. No substantial differences were found in women with the lowest risk profile.These findings suggest that second-or higher-generation Mexican-American women born in the United States do not have LBW infants more often than Mexican-born women, and that the incidence approximates that of Mexican-born women across a broad range of sociodemographic features.
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