A comparison of the fertility of Dominican, Puerto Rican and mainland Puerto Rican adolescents.

Data from three fertility surveys are used to examined the probabilities and determinants of adolescent births among Dominican and Puerto Rican women. Young women in the Dominican Republic are the most likely to have had a child by each year of age from 14 through 24, followed by young women on the Island of Puerto Rico; the probability of an early birth is lowest for Puerto Rican women on the U.S. mainland. Eighteen percent of Dominican women have had a child before their 18th birthday, compared with 13% of women living in Puerto Rico, and 10% of Puerto Rican women in metropolitan New York. The cumulative probabilities that Puerto Rican women will have borne a child before their 20th birthday are almost identical, whether the women live on the island or the U.S. mainland, but the difference between Puerto Rican and Dominican women widens. The order is reversed, however, in the analysis of premarital births: The probability of a premarital birth during adolescence is highest for Puerto Rican women in New York, and lowest for Dominican women. In a separate logistic regression analysis, education and age at first sexual intercourse are shown to be important determinants of adolescent fertility in all three populations.