Study of Births Puzzles Experts

Latino mothers receive less prenatal care than average, but their babies tend to be just as healthy or healthier than other children--a finding researchers cannot fully explain, according to a UCLA study released Wednesday.

“In spite of low income, low education and low access to care, Latino babies have a healthy profile,” said David Hayes-Bautista, director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture, which produced the study.

The center released the findings as part of an examination of state statistics for 521,265 births reported in 1998--a year in which the study found that Latinos accounted for nearly half of all births, or 47.5%. White mothers accounted for 33.9% of the babies born, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders with 10.7%, African Americans with 6.8% and American Indians with 0.5%.

Latinos first surpassed whites as the ethnic group with the largest number of births statewide in 1991, according to birth records from the state Department of Health Services.

“We can see the future population of California by looking into the delivery rooms today,” Hayes-Bautista said. “Almost half of the newborns are Latinos.”

Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Claremont Graduate University think tank on Latino issues, said the shift in birth trends is a precursor of a demographic change that is occurring across California and the nation. Today, Latinos are the largest minority in 23 states in the country--an increase of 10 states since 1990, he said.

In the county-by-county comparison of births, the UCLA study showed that a smaller proportion of Latino babies were born with low birth weights when compared with black, white and Asian and Pacific Islander babies.

The infant mortality rate for Latinos was half that of African American babies.

The proportion of babies born with low birth weights often predicts infant mortality. Despite lower socioeconomic status and education levels and limited access to health care, however, the rate of deaths among Latino infants before the age of 1 is relatively low--an example of what the report calls the “Latino epidemiological paradox.”

Hayes-Bautista could not pinpoint the reasons for the paradox but said they were probably related to cultural differences.