Social class, prenatal care, maternal age and parity: a study of their interrelation in six Italian centres

Abstract

"Multiple Correspondence Analysis was used to describe the complex structure formed by those sociodemographic variables, whose association with the occurrence of prenatal and neonatal deaths and diseases has been most frequently stressed in literature: social class, prenatal care, maternal age and parity. The study regards 41,537 women included in a multicentre survey of perinatal preventive medicine, which was carried out, between 1973 and 1979, in six Italian centres...." It is found that "in all centres there are distinct groups of women characterized by a set of unfavourable factors closely interrelated: low social class implies lower prenatal care, higher occurrence of precocious or belated childbearing and higher number of pregnancies, often unintended." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND ITA)