Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 5, Number 10, 1 ʻOkakopa 1988 — Hawaiian Births [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Hawaiian Births

Facts «tiid Figures By Gordon Frazier

ln the August issue of Ka Wai Ola O OHA this eolumn talked about Hawaiian marriages. As many married couples go on to start a family, this eolumn too is moving on to talk about Hawaiian births. The 1986 Department of Health Statistical Report says there were 5,676 Hawaiian babies born in 1986. Just over half of them, 2,939, were boys, while the girls numbered 2,733. Nearly all these babies were born in hospitals (99.2 percent), and 90.1 percent of Hawaiian babies were delivered by a doctor. A few babies were delivered at birthing centers or small clinics and 33 were born at home.

There were 4,181 Hawaiian mothers who gave birth in 1986 and 3,315 Hawaiian men who became fathers. As shown in Figure 1, a third of Hawaiian babies, 1,824, had both a Hawaiian mother and father. For the rest, only one parent was Hawaiian. In Figure 1 you ean see that for 15.3 percent of Hawaiian babies, one parent is Caucasian, while almost as many Hawaiian babies have a Filipino mom or dad. There were 599 (10.6 percent) Hawaiian babies with a Japanese parent. The remaining 27.8 percent of Hawaiian babies had one parent from another ethnic group, such as Chinese, Portuguese, or Puerto Rican. The ethnicity of parents is taken from the birth certificates filled out by the parents. I

Of the 4,181 Hawaiian women who gave birth in 1986, nearly all were between 15 and 40 years of age, and 63 percent were between 20 and 30 years old. Figure 2 presents more detail on the age of Hawaiian mothers. For 37 percent of Hawaiians who became parents in 1986, this was their first child. While for many (29 percent), this was the second baby, and for 18 percent this was the third. Families seem to be smaller these days; only 7 percent of Hawaiian mothers gave birth to their fifth or subsequent child in 1986.

It seems from the data that Hawaiian mothers are good about prenatal visits to the doctor. Most Hawaiian mothers start prenatal visits in the second or third month of pregnancy. Only a few waited until the fifth month or later. Hawaiian babies as well as every other baby are mueh more likely to celebrate their first birthday these days. The State infant death rate is about 11 per 1,000 live births. As recently as 1940, infant

death rate for the btate was 45 per 1,UUU live births. Before 1910, the infant death rate was often greater than 200 per 1,000 live births— a fifth of the babies born in the State back then died in their first year. Nowadays, Hawaiian babies not only start out healthier, they live longer lives as we learned in the January 1988 Facts and Figures eolumn.