Alcohol and Pregnancy in the United States
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- According to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS)—a survey of more than 400,000 people by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—during 2018–2020, nearly 14% of pregnant people ages 18 to 49 reported current drinking.1
- Also according to BRFSS, during 2018–2020, about 5% of pregnant people ages 18 to 49 reported binge drinking in the past 30 days.1
- According to 2021 data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)—a survey of about 70,000 people by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration—9.8% of pregnant women ages 15 to 44 in the United States used alcohol in the past month.2
- The 2021 NSDUH also found that 4.3% of pregnant women ages 15 to 44 in the United States reported binge drinking in the past month.2
- A study supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of more than 6,000 children in first grade across four U.S. communities estimated that as many as 1% to 5% of first-grade children have fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.3
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), caution should be used when comparing estimates from the 2020 and 2021 NSDUH to those from prior years due to methodological changes. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, data for NSDUH were collected during in-home visits, using computer-assisted techniques. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a delay in data collection during 2020 and the introduction of web-based data collection, with very limited in-person data collection. Because these changes in data collection coincided with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and any related behavioral or mental health changes, we cannot fully separate the effects of methodological changes from true changes in the outcomes. Please see the Methodological Summary and Definitions [PDF – 4 MB] for more information.