The Mexican paradox is the observation that Mexicans exhibit a surprisingly low incidence of

low birth weight Low birth weight (LBW) is defined by the World Health Organization as a birth weight of an infant of or less, regardless of gestational age. Infants born with LBW have added health risks which require close management, often in a neonatal intens ...

(especially foreign-born Mexican mothers), contrary to what would be expected from their

socioeconomic status Socioeconomic status (SES) is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family's economic access to resources and social position in relation to others. When analyzing a family's ...

(SES). This appears as an

outlier In statistics, an outlier is a data point that differs significantly from other observations. An outlier may be due to a variability in the measurement, an indication of novel data, or it may be the result of experimental error; the latter are ...

in graphs correlating SES with low-birth-weight rates. The medical causes of lower rates of low birth weights among birthing Mexican mothers has been called into question. The

Hispanic paradox The Hispanic paradox is an epidemiological finding that Hispanic Americans tend to have health outcomes that "paradoxically" are comparable to, or in some cases better than, those of their U.S. non-Hispanic White counterparts, even though Hispani ...

refers to the same phenomenon observed across the populations of South and Central America, where Mexicans remain the healthier.

Description

The results of a study showed that the mean birth weight of Mexican-American babies was 3.34 kg (7.37 lbs), while that of

non-Hispanic White Non-Hispanic whites or Non-Latino whites are Americans who are classified as "white", and are not of Hispanic (also known as "Latino") heritage. The United States Census Bureau defines ''white'' to include European Americans, Middle Eastern Am ...

babies was 3.39 kg (7.48 lbs.). This finding re-emphasized the independence of mean birth weight and LBW. This however did not refute the discrepancies in LBW for Mexicans. The study also showed that the overall

preterm birth Preterm birth, also known as premature birth, is the birth of a baby at fewer than 37 weeks gestational age, as opposed to full-term delivery at approximately 40 weeks. Extreme preterm is less than 28 weeks, very early preterm birth is betwee ...

rate was higher among Mexican Americans (10.6%) than non-Hispanic Whites (9.3%). In North Carolina, from 1996 to 2000, the infant death rate was 6.1 for Mexican-born infants, in comparison to 6.6 for White infants, and 15 for Black infants. The overall hypothesis of the authors was that this finding reflected an error in recorded

gestational age In obstetrics, gestational age is a measure of the age of a pregnancy which is taken from the beginning of the woman's last menstrual period (LMP), or the corresponding age of the gestation as estimated by a more accurate method if available. Su ...

, described in a strongly

bimodal In statistics, a multimodal distribution is a probability distribution with more than one mode. These appear as distinct peaks (local maxima) in the probability density function, as shown in Figures 1 and 2. Categorical, continuous, and dis ...

birth-weight distribution at young gestational ages for Mexican-Americans. Many external effects come into play, such as the Mexican diet, extended family ties, low levels of stress, strong religious beliefs and strong ties to their communities. A 1995 study suggested that the Virgin of Guadeloupe encouraged healthy births thanks to its iconic pregnancy symbolism. Another study suggested that resistance to changes in

diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

is responsible for the positive birth weight association for Mexican-American mothers. Yet another study showed that Mexicans blend traditional and modern medicine, a potential explanation for the paradox. It was also observed that, the longer Mexican women live in the United States, the more their infant mortality risks increased. Lower occurrences of

periodontal disease Periodontal disease, also known as gum disease, is a set of inflammatory conditions affecting the tissues surrounding the teeth. In its early stage, called gingivitis, the gums become swollen and red and may bleed. It is considered the main cau ...

with Mexican-American women was also suggested as an explanation for the Mexican paradox. Another study revealed that, beyond healthy births, Mexican infants also have lower developmental outcomes in their development years. A 2014 study concluded that the Mexican paradox is disappearing slowly, most of the comparison data between Mexican infants and White infants being fairly similar in recent years. Another 2016 study showed that the Mexican paradox erodes in the third generation of the immigrated family. It was also verified that Mexicans have less high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases and most cancers. than the US population in general.

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Further reading