Smoking and Prematurity in the Presence of Other Variables

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Abstract
An analysis of data on 3,156 Negro women who delivered single, live infants confirmed an association between infant sex, maternal smoking habits, and birth weight and revealed other factors of importance. Maternal prenatal weight in relation to height is clearly associated with infant birth weight and the probability of prematurity. Parity is also related, but to a lesser extent. While supplying some insight into the prematurity phenomenon, these factors cannot explain it, since they yield a multiple correlation coefficient of approximately 0.2. Smoking apparently influences the prematurity rate (by weight) mostly among women who would be unlikely to deliver a light infant for other reasons.

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