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even when the effects of socioeconomic and behavioral factors—such as income, education, adequacy of prenatal care and harmful habits—are taken into account.5 In addition, despite the wide selection of safe and effective contraceptive methods and extensive dissemination of contraceptive information, unwanted pregnancy remains an important U. S. public health problem. More than half of the six million pregnancies occurring in 1988 in the United States were unplanned; 1.6 million of these pregnancies ended in an abortion and 1.5 million were carried to term.6 Among live births in 1988, 28% were mistimed and 12% were unwanted at the time of conception.7 Unintended pregnancies account for a substantial proportion of all births, and are particularly common among young, unmarried women. Data from the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) revealed that between 1983 and 1988, 87% of births to 15–19-year-old never-married women and 69% of births to 20–24-yearold never-married women were unwanted or mistimed.8 The possible negative effect on birth outcomes of unintended pregnancy is of special concern in regard to young, unmarried, low-income women, who are at greater risk of low birth weight than other women.9 Marjorie R. Sable is assistant professor at the School of Social Work, and John C. Spencer is senior research analyst, Assessment Resource Center, College of Education, both at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Mo. Joseph W. Stockbauer and Vicky Howell are research analysts with the Center for Health Information, Management and Epidemiology, and Wayne F. Schramm is chief, Bureau of Health Data Analysis, all at the Missouri Department of Health, Jefferson City, Mo. Allen A. Herman is a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Bethesda, Md. The data on which this article is based were collected by the Center for Health Information, Management and Epidemiology, Missouri Department of Health, under contract NO1-HD-6-2916 from the NICHD, Bethesda, Md. Pregnancy Wantedness and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes: Differences by Race and Medicaid Status