Thread: OH: Mexican immigrant women have more kids

Latinas lead rise in local birthrate
Fertility rate for small population segment more than doubled from 2000 to 2006
Wednesday, January 23, 2008 3:16 AM
By Debbie Gebolys
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH


Adriana Ramirez cradles newborn Andres at Mount Carmel St. Ann's hospital as his brother Alejandro, 3, finishes a snack. She and her husband say they want just two children. Latino births in central Ohio rose faster this decade than births of other population groups, but some predict a slowdown ahead.</p>
RENEE SAUER DISPATCH

Adriana Ramirez cradles newborn Andres at Mount Carmel St. Ann's hospital as his brother Alejandro, 3, finishes a snack. She and her husband say they want just two children. Latino births in central Ohio rose faster this decade than births of other population groups, but some predict a slowdown ahead.
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Central Ohio women contributed to a nationwide baby "boomlet" in 2006, giving birth to 3 percent more children than in 2000.

The majority of central Ohio women are white, but Latinas who live here had dramatically more babies. For every 1,000 women in their race or ethnic group, whites had 68 babies, blacks 93 and Latinas 153, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

The fertility rate for central Ohio Latinas more than doubled over the six years.

Adriana and Tony Ramirez's second son, Andres, was born in Mount Carmel St. Ann's hospital last week. He joins a 3-year-old brother, Alejandro. Adriana and Tony, who were childhood sweethearts in Colombia, married six years ago and live near Polaris.

"We could not handle more than two kids, especially two in day care," said Mr. Ramirez. He is American-born and a real-estate agent; she is an immigrant and a banking supervisor. They want to earn enough to give their boys a good education.

South American culture, influenced by European, Jewish and indigenous ancestors, is different from Mexican, Mr. Ramirez said.

Fertility rates -- the average number of children per woman -- average 2.7 in Central America and 2.4 in South America, rates that hold relatively stable when they emigrate. But rates among Mexican women who come to the U.S. jump to 3.2, while the fertility rate in Mexico is just 2.4, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington-based research organization.

Mexican women who leave their homeland often have more children than those who stay, the center found. Immigrants who come in hopes of overcoming poverty can give birth to U.S. citizens, for whom they hold high hopes of economic success, the center added.

Those who immigrate fall mostly in the 27 to 35 age range, a prime group for giving birth, said Josue Vicente, a Mexican native and executive director of the Ohio Hispanic Coalition.

Mexican families in the 1980s routinely had seven to 10 children, particularly among Catholics, the poor and the less educated, Vicente said. By 1990, the Mexican government began encouraging parents to have fewer children.

For the past five years, the Hispanic Coalition has encouraged central Ohio immigrants to consider the advantages of smaller families, Vicente said.

"The average in central Ohio in Latino families is three or four kids, compared to one or two in central Ohio overall," Vicente said.

He said it will take years before changing attitudes are reflected in statistics.

"In a few years, more families will want one or two kids," he said. "It's a better opportunity for (children) to go to college or (for families) to try to spend the difference between raising two or three kids compared to four or five."

A recent national study by the Associated Press suggested that a jump in the number of Latino babies nationally contributed to a 45-year high of 4.3 million babies born overall in 2006 in the U.S. The picture is different in central Ohio, where the Latino population is small.

"Because we don't have large and increasing numbers of African-Americans and Hispanics, we're not going to see the same magnitude of change," said Elizabeth Cooksey, associate director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.

The term Hispanic, adopted by U.S. government statisticians in the 1960s, is interchangeable with Latino.

In 2006, 2.3 percent of Ohio's population was Latino, compared with 14.8 percent nationally, according to U.S. Census data. Blacks accounted for 12 percent of Ohio's population, 12.8 percent of the nation's.

In Ohio, "We are more white than the national average, down a bit for African-Americans and way down on Hispanic," Cooksey said.

Nearly 80 percent of central Ohioans are white, said Nancy Reger, a demographer at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.

"There are more Hispanics in the United States now than African-Americans," she said. "That's not true in central Ohio."

Ohio's snaillike growth rate -- 1 percent from 2000 to 2006 -- is disappointing, Reger said.

"Ohio is stuck in a time warp," she said. "We're just plugging along in slow motion, not experiencing that growth from immigrants. We're getting older, and people are leaving. There are less babies being born, and that's our primary element of growth."

Even though economic growth has been flat in central Ohio, the region is in a better position in the state to experience a population increase, she said.

One reason: The median age of a central Ohio woman in 2006 was 35.8, compared with 39.1 statewide and 37.8 nationally.

"We're young," Reger said. "We have a higher percentage of women actually in childbearing years."

dgebolys@dispatch.com

Funny, I'm an American Citizen with a college degree and I cannot afford to have one child, much less three or four children.

I guess it's easy to have three or four children when they are being subsidized by American Citizens.

Latino births in central Ohio rose faster this decade than births of other population groups, but some predict a slowdown ahead.

....thank God, Lets hope so.

This is nothing, last time illegals got amnesty in 1986 their birthrate increased 25%.