NCHS Releases Final 2024 Maternal Mortality Data

National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released a new report, titled “Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2024,” showing that the 2024 maternal mortality rate was not significantly different from 2023.

Key Findings from the Report

• The maternal mortality rate for 2024 is 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births. This is not significantly less than the 2023 rate of 18.6. In total, 649 women died from maternal causes in 2024, compared with 669 in the previous year.
• The report highlights significant disparities in maternal mortality rates among different racial groups:
  • For Black (non-Hispanic) women, the rate was 44.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, which is three times higher than the rate for White (non-Hispanic) women, which stood at 14.2.
  • The observed decrease in rates for Black, White, and Hispanic women, and observed increase for Asian (non-Hispanic) women from 2023 to 2024 were not statistically significant.
• Women ages 40 and older had a maternal mortality rate of 62.3 per 100,000 live births, which is nearly five times higher than the rate for women younger than 25, which was 13.7.

Background Information

A maternal death is defined as the death of a woman during pregnancy or within 42 days after the end of pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy. Maternal mortality rates are calculated based on the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

Official statistics are gathered through death certificates completed by physicians and reported to the states. In 2003, a national consensus process recommended that all states include a standardized checkbox on death certificates to better identify maternal deaths. This checkbox was gradually implemented across states, with the last state adopting it in 2017.

Due to concerns about data quality, NCHS stopped producing a national maternal mortality rate in 2008. The process resumed in 2018 after all states had added the checkbox to their death certificates.

NCHS continues to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the pregnancy checkbox to support accurate identification and reporting of maternal deaths. State vital records offices also now provide additional verification of pregnancy checkbox information for most death certificates on which the box is checked.