Decisión sobre iniciación sexual: el caso de adolescentes uruguayas

We analyze teenage sexual initiation of Uruguayan women aged less than 24 years, by a multinomial logit model for the alternatives of not initiating, initiating without a contraceptive method and initiating with a contraceptive method. In the paper we ?nd three relevant results. First, the level of eduation has a strong impact on the probability of iniciating with a contraceptive method. Secondly, we observe that the information given through the educational system, substantially reduces the probability of initiating without methods. The information given through the health system, although it can be biased due to endogeneity problems, is exective as women that obtain it have higher probability of iniciating with the use of contraceptive methods. Finally, there is an intergenerational behavior transmittion. Those women whose mothers gave birth for the ?rst time as teenagers have less probability of not iniciating, while those with highly educated mothers is less probable that they iniciate without a contracewptive method.