Smoking During Pregnancy (2025)
Fewer than two in a hundred mothers now smoke during pregnancy, but the rate is many times higher among those who did not finish school.
Key findings
- Smoking during pregnancy has become rare: 1.9% of U.S. mothers smoked at some point during pregnancy in 2025 (66,729 births), down dramatically from past decades.
- But it is sharply concentrated by education. The rate ran from 5.7% among mothers with 9th to 12th grade, no diploma down to 0.1% among mothers with doctorate or professional degree, a gap of roughly 95 to 1.
- The least-educated mothers smoked during pregnancy at many times the rate of the most-educated, one of the widest health-behavior gradients in the birth data.
- Smoking tracks with age too, peaking among mothers in their twenties and thirties who did not finish schooling rather than among teens.
Smoking in pregnancy is a leading preventable cause of low birth weight and infant harm, and it has fallen to a small share of births. This measures that share for every 2025 U.S. birth with reported smoking status, and shows how concentrated it is by the mother's education. These are exact counts from the near-census of birth records.
Smoking in pregnancy, 2025
Smoking in pregnancy by mother's education
| Category | Smoked during pregnancy |
|---|---|
| 8th grade or less | 1.42% |
| 9th to 12th grade, no diploma | 5.69% |
| High school graduate or GED | 3.14% |
| Some college, no degree | 2.31% |
| Associate degree | 1.18% |
| Bachelor's degree | 0.22% |
| Master's degree | 0.1% |
| Doctorate or professional degree | 0.06% |
By mother's age
| Mother age | Smoked in pregnancy |
|---|---|
| Under 20 | 1.3% |
| 20 to 24 | 1.7% |
| 25 to 29 | 1.8% |
| 30 to 34 | 1.9% |
| 35 to 39 | 2.1% |
| 40 and older | 2.1% |
Among births with reported smoking status. Exact counts; no sampling margins of error.
Data Sources & Methodology
The figures on this page are computed directly from the source data below. Narrative text accompanies the figures but never generates them.
CDC/NCHS Natality (Births) Public Use File
- Vintage:
- 2025
- Access:
- BigQuery
- Cadence:
- annual
A near-census of U.S. births for the year, drawn from birth certificates. Each row is one birth, carrying the age, education, race and Hispanic origin, and marital status of the mother; prenatal care, pre-pregnancy BMI, and smoking; the delivery method, attendant, birth place, and payer; and the sex, birth weight, gestational age, plurality, and Apgar score of the infant. It supports analysis of who is being born and how, by maternal characteristics.
Every U.S. birth is registered on a birth certificate, which NCHS compiles into an annual public-use micro-file. Each record describes one birth and its mother.
The file covers essentially all registered births in the data year, not a probability sample. Statistics are exact counts; there are no sampling weights and no sampling margins of error.
To protect confidentiality, the public-use file omits state and county. Analyses here are national and by maternal and infant characteristics; state-level figures require CDC WONDER or the restricted-use file.
Gestational age uses the obstetric estimate (combined gestation); birth weight is in grams; delivery method distinguishes vaginal from cesarean; some reported items (education, payer, smoking) carry reporting flags for areas that had not adopted the 2003 certificate revision.
- No state or county geography in the public-use file.
- A few items (for example payer and smoking) were not reported by every area in early revision years; reporting flags identify coverage.
- The final annual file lags roughly a year; provisional counts via CDC WONDER are more timely but less detailed.
- Birth-certificate data depend on accurate completion by hospitals and reporting areas.
How these figures were produced
- Estimate type:
- Administrative near-census (exact counts)
- Weighting:
- None (not a weighted sample)
Suggested citation
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, 2025 Natality Public Use File. Analysis by Matt George, itsmattgeorge.com. Retrieved 2026-10-24.