Clarifying the difference in risk between mistimed and unwanted pregnancies may help guide decisions regarding services to women and infants.

No abstract

The relationships between self-reported general health, employment, and attitudes toward the employment of married women have been analyzed for a representative sample of married, middle-aged women in the United States. The cross-sectional data indicate that women who were in the labor force had better health than women who were out of the labor force. In addition, women whose labor force status was compatible with their attitudes toward employment tended to have better health than women for whom there was a discrepancy between labor force status and attitudes. Analysis of the longitudinal data indicate that several causal mechanisms contributed to the relationships observed in the cross-sectional data. For the women with favorable attitudes toward employment, it appears that being a housewife had more detrimental effects on health than being employed. In contrast, for the women with unfavorable or neutral attitudes toward employment, it appears that employment status did not affect health. For healthy women, being employed may have contributed to more favorable attitudes toward employment. Healthy women were more likely than unhealthy women to stay in the labor force. Thus, it appears that there are multiple causal relationships linking employment status, attitudes toward employment and women's health.

For a sample of white women aged 45-64, women who were out of the labor force had poorer self-reported health and higher mortality than women who were in the labor force. It has been hypothesized that women who are out of the labor force may tend to exaggerate their poor health in self-report data. However, no evidence of bias of this type was found in an analysis of the relationships between self-reported health and subsequent mortality. The validity of self-reports of illness as a reason for not seeking work has been assessed using data for a sample of 30-44 year old women who were out of the labor force. Over 90% of the women who gave illness or disability as their main reason for not seeking work had previous or contemporaneous independent, self-report evidence of poor health. The findings of this study and previous evidence indicate that poor health reduces the likelihood that a woman will join the labor force, and this is a major reason why women who are not in the labor force have poorer health than those who are in the labor force.

The Dominican Republic has witnessed a significant increase of HIV/AIDS in recent years, particularly among young women. Prior research suggested that sex education could be an effective tool in combating risky sexual behaviors in adolescents; yet, most of this research has been conducted with Caucasian study populations, resulting in limited generalizability to Latino populations. The present study sought to address this gap by examining the effects of sex education on HIV/AIDS knowledge and condom use among young women in the Dominican Republic. Methods: Data were analyzed from 1,608 female adolescent and young adult respondents to the ENJOVEN survey. Logistic regression models were used to investigate the relation between exposure to sex education and HIV/AIDS knowledge, current and consistent condom use. Results: Respondents who reported receiving sex education were 1.72 times more likely to have high HIV/AIDS knowledge than respondents who reported not receiving sex education (CI: 1.36-2.18, ρ = .000). Respondents who reported receiving sex education were 2.52 times more likely to report currently using condoms than respondents who reported not receiving sex education (CI: 1.65-3.85, ρ = .000). Conclusion·. The results provide additional evidence that sex education programs are effective at increasing HIV/AIDS knowledge and condom use in young Dominican women.