Higher cigarette prices increase the number of pregnant women who quit smoking and also improve the birth weight of the babies born to those women, according to a new study published in the April issue of the Journal of Public Economics .
Many women quit smoking during pregnancy.
The bad news is that the pregnant women who continue to smoke don't smoke any less because of the higher prices. Jeanne Ringel of Louisiana State University co- authored the study. Evans and Ringel examined smoking rates among women who gave birth before and after state tax hikes. The study, funded by the Substance Abuse Policy Research Program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation , is the first to show that pregnant women are responsive to changes in cigarette prices. The data for this study came from nearly 10 million births in the national Natality Detail File of the National Center for Health Statistics, which contains pregnancy and birth related information, including information about birth outcomes, demographic characteristics and maternal smoking.