Highest Infant and Maternal Mortality Rates: We’re Number 1
The Commonwealth Fund, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the OECD, reports that “the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries.” Further, there is an overrepresentation of obstetrician-gynecologists in the maternity workforce, a shortage of midwives, and the US lacks comprehensive post-partum support.
Women in the United States experience more late maternal deaths than women in other high-income countries. In the US, 52 percent of all maternal deaths come after delivery or postpartum while 17 percent of deaths occur on the day of delivery. Roosa Tikkanen and her colleagues at the Commonwealth Fund note during the first week of postpartum that “severe bleeding, high blood pressure, and infection are the most common contributors to maternal deaths, while cardiomyopathy is the leading cause of late deaths.”
As in many cases of health and welfare, there is a racial component to maternal mortality. Research conducted by Marian F. MacDorman and her colleagues concludes that Black women are more than three times as likely to die during pregnancy or postpartum than white women. Linda Villarosa, in Under the Skin, makes a sweeping and powerful assessment of the systematic assault on Black American’s bodies, the racial disparities, the neglect, the inbred biases, and the social racisms that African Americans endure, no matter their social or economic status.
Sources: Roosa Tikkanen, Munira Z. Gunja, Molly Fitzgerald, and Laurie Zephyrin, “Maternal Mortality and Maternity Care in the United States Compared to 10 Other Developed Countries,” Commonwealth Fund, Issue Brief, November 18, 2020, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/nov/maternal-mortality-maternity-care-us-compared-10-countries; Marian F. MacDorman, et al., “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Maternal Mortality in the United States Using Enhanced Vital Records, 2016,2017,” American Journal of Public Health, September 2021, https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306375; Linda Villarosa, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America (New York: Anchor, 2023).
