Objective: Describe the prevalence of asthma and to test the association of asthma with self-rated health. Methods: Population-based cross-sectional study. The data used in this study are from the 2008 National Household Survey with complete coverage of the national territory. In this study the reference population were adults (n = 216,547). Poisson regression was conducted, considering the design effect. Results: The prevalence of asthma was 3.8% among adults, higher among women, older adults, with poor socioeconomic status, with higher education, with more comorbidities, who were hospitalized in the past year, and negatively evaluate their health. In the adjusted analysis we observed that the prevalence of negative self-rated health was 1.41 higher among asthmatics. Conclusion: Asthma prevalence has shown great variation in relation to socioeconomic and demographic variables. Moreover, there was significant association between asthma and negative self-rated health.