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History and Background of La Paz, Mexico

La Paz is the capital of Baja California Sur and it situated about one-tenth up the Baja Peninsula’s eastern coastline. The city of La Paz leads the state in the critical areas of government, health institutions, higher education, communications and electrical power distribution.

Hernan Cortez first made a visit to the area of modern day La Paz in 1535. Missionaries founded it as a permanent settlement in 1811. Insufficient fresh water and fertile soil curtailed previous attempts to develop the area, but its large bay provided an ample food supply and an economy based on fishing and pearl diving in the nineteenth century. The city’s designation as the state’s capital, the completion of the Transpeninsular Highway in 1973, increases in domestic and international trade opportunities, and commercial growth all contributed to the area’s development in the latter part of the twentieth century. The city of La Paz ranks third in the country behind Colima and Aguascalientes for the highest quality of life, according to at least one index of quality.

Demographics of La Paz, Mexico

The total population of Baja California Sur in the year 2000 was 424,041 and the population of the city of La Paz was 162,594 . By 2005, the total population in BCS had increased by 21 percent to 512,170 and La Paz increased 16 percent to 189,176 people. The majority of residents in BCS and La Paz are young. Over 25 percent of the population in the city of La Paz is under the age of 15 years old and an additional 20 percent of the residents are between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four years old.

Poverty

Families living in poverty generally do not have the necessary means to satisfy basic nutrition, formal housing, and access to basic education and health services. Within their community, they may also lack access to stable employment, education, and health clinics. Within neighborhoods that suffer from poverty, fewer resources are available to protect children from drugs, alcohol, and other "risky behaviors." Adding to this are elevated school dropout rates which, often combined with a lack of employment opportunities, allows many youth ample time to adopt the "risky bahaviors" of older peers.

Many young women who become pregnant are unlikely to continue working or attending school until their child is old enough to attend school itself, if they decide they are able to return at all. Some women find the stresses of motherhood to be too much to balance with education and a career, or thier work opportunities are minimal due to their lack of education, still others find the high costs of childcare a large factor in deciding to further their education or seek employment.

Statistically, two-thirds of teenage parents had been born when their parents were teenagers, suggesting a perpetuation of the issue from generation to generation. Some research has shown that many mothers who had given birth during their adolescence continued to be disadvantaged later in life. For this reason, experts recommend creating initiatives for the children of adolescent mothers by targeting the neighborhoods in which they live.

Teenage Pregnancy and Parents in the Study Site

Even though Baja California Sur and its capital, La Paz, have a high standard of living, the region also has experienced some of the highest percentages of registered births to teenage mothers, which could be reflective of the local population make-up, which is dominated by the younger age segments.

The official Mexican national statistics obtained through the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI) state that between 2002 and 2007, the percentage of registered births to adolescent mothers was 17.3 percent. In Baja California Sur the percentage during that period was 19.2%, almost two percentage points higher than the national rate. This ranked BCS in the top quarter of all Mexican states with the highest percentages in that five year span. In 2007, only three other Mexican states (Chihuahua-21.8%; Nayarit-21.4%; and Durango-20.6%) had higher percentages of registered births to adolescents than BCS (20.5%) (INEGI, 2007).

Table 5 shows how the percentage of births to adolescents started to decrease during the 1990s decade, but started to increase again in the year 2000. That local trend reflected the national pattern. Meanwhile, the total number of births to adolescents has been steadily increasing the whole time.

Source: INEGI, (1993) Estadísticas Demográficas. Cuaderno de Población Núm. 4, 1993.

   México.; INEGI, (1997). Estadísticas Demográficas. Cuaderno de Población Núm. 8, 1997. México; INEGI, (2001). Estadísticas Demográficas. Cuaderno de Población Núm.13, 2001. México.; INEGI, (2002). Estadísticas Demográficas. Cuaderno de Población Núm. 14, 2002. México.; INEGI, (2003). Estadísticas Demográficas. Cuaderno de Población Núm.15, 2003. México.

Percentage of all live births born to adolescent mothers increased from 13.3% in 1990 to 17.3% in 2000 (INEGI, 1990, 2000b). From 2003 to 2007 the percentage continued to increase from 18.2% to 20.5%. However, the average number of children from teenage mothers decreased from 2.9 in 2000 to 2.1 in 2007. Below (Table 6) we see how BCS has maintained higher percentages of births to teenage mothers than the national average this past decade. BCS had the tenth highest percentage of registered births to teenage mothers in Mexico when compared to the other states in 2003 and increased to the fourth highest percentage of teenage pregnancy in 2007. Again, this could be attributed to higher percentages of younger age segments in relation to other age groups at the local levels.

The following table shows the total number of live births to teenagers in La Paz and the percentage of girls in the age ranges of twelve to nineteen years old that were teen mothers in the year 2000 (Table 7).

In the near future, if the trend continues, well over one thousand children will be born to adolescent mothers each year. In order to maintain its high standards of living, La Paz , should give the local issue of teenage pregnancy special attention as more than a quarter of the population was under the age of fifteen in the year 2005.

Source: INEGI, (2005). II Conteo de Población y Vivienda, 2005. México. Retrieved April 10, 2008, from http://www.inegi.org.mx/inegi/default.aspx?s=est&c=10215

Source: INEGI, (2000b). Censos de Población y Vivienda, 2000. México. Retrieved April 10, 2008, from http://www.inegi.org.mx/inegi/default.aspx?s=est&c=10211

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Last modified: 05/13/10