Maternal mortality rate (pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births)

Maternal mortality rate (pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births)

Maternal mortality can be defined as the death of a parent that takes place during pregnancy, childbirth or post-partum. A parent’s death is detrimental to the development of the newborn child and poses a great hardship to the affected household.
This indicator is available at the national level only because the CDC does not suggest comparing state-level estimates. The State of Babies Yearbook: 2023, 2022, and 2021 data reflect a new methodology, recently adopted by the CDC (to be called 2018 method), for coding maternal deaths, which is not comparable with previous year’s data. This new 2018 method was adopted to mitigate errors that were revealed with the reporting of maternal deaths (e.g., overreporting of maternal deaths among older women).
Data reflect maternal mortality in 2020.
This indicator can be disaggregated by mother’s race/ethnicity at the national level only. The only subgroups reported in the source document are non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic White, and Hispanic of all races. MacDorman, M. F., Declercq, E., Cabral, H., & Morton, C. (2016). Is the United States maternal mortality rate increasing? Disentangling trends from measurement issues. Obstetrics and gynecology, 128(3), 447. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5001799/
Source:
Hoyert, DL. (2022). Maternal mortality rates in the United States, 2020. NCHS Health E-Stats. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2020/e-stat-maternal-mortality-rates-2022.pdf

Not Ranked
This indicator does not factor into the category's GROW ranking.