Survey report: Puerto Rico.

Findings of the 1982 Fertility and Family Planning Assessment suggest that Puerto Rico may have the highest rate of sterilization acceptance in the world. The survey found that 41% of married women in Puerto Rico have been sterilized to prevent further pregnancies and another 4.6% had husbands who had been sterilized. Moreover, 39% of young married women (25-29 years of age) opted for this method of permanent fertility control. Overall, 69% of married women were using some form of birth control at the time of the 1982 survey. Female sterilization accounted for 58% of total birth control use, compared with only 26% in the US. Oral contraceptives (8.3%), rhythm (5.2%), and the condom (4.4%) were the next most popular methods of family planning among the Puerto Rican contraceptive acceptors. Female sterilization was twice as prevalent among non-college educated Puerto Rican women than college-educated women, while reliance on male sterilization was greater among couples where the wife had at least a high school education. An estimated 33% of the decline in marital fertility in Puerto Rico in 1977-82 has been attributed to the level of sterilization. 27% of the sterilized women in Puerto Rico never used any other method of family planning, indicating a need for improved access to information about reversible methods for young women.