Smoking during pregnancy appears to have decreased from 1989 through 1998. Despite increased knowledge of the adverse health effects of smoking during pregnancy, estimates of women smoking during pregnancy range from 12% based on birth certificate data to as high as 22% based on survey data.
Smoking during pregnancy is highest among women in the 18-24 age bracket. One study shows a large number of women continued to smoke during their pregnancy in 1998 (17.1% of pregnant women).
White women (16.2% of pregnant women) and American Indian/Alaskan Native women (20.2% of pregnant women) were most likely to smoke during pregnancy in 1998. Asian/Pacific Islander women (3.1% of pregnant women) and Hispanic woman (4.0% of pregnant women) had the lowest levels. Black women (9.6% of pregnant women) were below average in smoking.
Women with only 9 to 11 years of education had an alarmingly high rate of smoking during pregnancy in 1998 (25.5% of pregnant women).
Of those women who continued to smoke during pregnancy, 27.6% had 11 to 20 cigarettes a day.
Source: Women and Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General—2001 |
