Advance Report of Maternal and Infant Health Data from the Birth Certificate, 1991

Since 1989 information has been available on a wide variety of important maternal and infant health factors affecting birth outcome. These include medical and life-style risk factors of pregnancy and birth, obstetric procedures performed, complications of labor and delivery, method of delivery, etc. This major enhancement of medical and health data available on an annual basis for mothers and babies greatly expands the scope of information on pregnancy outcome in the United States.

Data Highlights:

Tobacco use during pregnancy has been strongly associated with reduced infant birthweight, premature delivery, and intrauterine growth retardation. Smoking during pregnancy was reported by 17.8 percent of women giving birth in 1991, a decline from 18.4 percent reported in 1990 and 19.5 reported in 1989.

Alcohol use during pregnancy is also a risk factor for poor pregnancy outcome. Studies show that heavy alcohol use causes a variety of adverse effects. The most severe is fetal alcohol syndrome. Reported alcohol use declined for mothers in all racial and Hispanic-origin groups from 1990 to 1991. In 1991, 2.9 percent of births were to mothers who reported alcohol use.

The most prevalent procedure reported in 1991, was electronic fetal monitoring (EFM), which was developed to detect early signs of fetal distress during labor. EFM was used for 76 percent of all live births in 1991 compared with 73 percent in 1990 and 68 percent in 1989.

This page last reviewed September 09, 2008