Original articleAlcohol and Tobacco Use Among Rural Mexican Adolescents: Individual, Familial, and Community Level Factors
Section snippets
Use of Alcohol and Tobacco in Mexico
The present study investigates individual-, family-, and community-level factors associated with alcohol and tobacco use within a large sample of rural Mexican adolescents living in poverty. Youth in developing countries are a key population to study given the increasing trajectory of alcohol and tobacco consumption, and the strong marketing efforts targeted toward these youth by producers of alcohol and tobacco [9], [10]. Youth in rural Mexico are of particular interest in light of the growing
Study design and sampling
The present study was conducted with 3922 adolescents (ages 15 to 19; mean age = 16.6 years; SD = 1.3) and their mothers from 333 rural communities as part of the 2003 Mexican National Social Welfare Survey, which was part of the evaluation of the large scale poverty alleviation program Oportunidades (previously Progresa). Cross-sectional data from this survey regarding nutrition and mental health have been published previously [28], [29]. The survey was designed to sample the poorest (income
Results
Frequencies and percentages for study variables are shown in Table 1. As described above, the design was intended to include families in the most economically disadvantaged rural communities. Not surprisingly, the percentage of majority-indigenous communities represented in the sample was high, at 28%. Although the majority of towns had street lighting and a health center or medical personnel, only 18% of communities had the basic infrastructure of a drainage system for waste and water.
Discussion
This study investigated the contributions of individual, family, and community-level characteristics for explaining alcohol and tobacco use among rural Mexican adolescents. Consistent with prior research conducted in other Mexican settings, individual-level characteristics of being older and male were each independently associated with greater use of alcohol and tobacco. This disparity was more striking for smoking than for alcohol. Adolescents' self-reported anxiety symptoms also uniquely
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research Initiative #P20RR20817 (PI Paul Gertler), NICHD R01 #HD44146-03 (PI Paul Gertler), NIH KO1 TW006077 (PI Lia Fernald), and the MacArthur Research Network on SES and Health. The authors thank James Manley for assistance in data analysis, and Laura Douglas and Sarah Roberts for their assistance in literature searching.
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