Skip to main content
Black Health logo Black Health
Maternal & Reproductive

Black Maternal Mortality

50.3

Maternal deaths per 100,000 live births among Black women in 2023. The national rate fell that year; this one did not.

Source: CDC/NCHS Health E-Stat 100, February 2025 (National Vital Statistics System)
Last updated: Download CSV

In 2023 the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, from 247 maternal deaths recorded in the National Vital Statistics System. Rates fell significantly that year for White and Hispanic women. For Black women the change from 2022 was not statistically significant, so the decline did not reach them.

Age is where the risk concentrates. Among Black women in 2023 the rate was 28.0 for those younger than 25, 53.6 at ages 25 to 39, and 132.9 at age 40 and older. The 2021 figure of 69.9 remains the highest NCHS has published for Black women in this series.

NCHS begins this series in 2018 because a 2018 change in how maternal deaths are coded and published makes earlier years non-comparable. It publishes rates for only the four largest race and Hispanic-origin groups and suppresses any figure that does not meet its reliability standards. There were 247 Black maternal deaths in the whole country in 2023, which is why no agency publishes a state-by-state maternal mortality rate by race, and why this page does not show one.

Maternal mortality rate by race and Hispanic origin, 2018 to 2023

Deaths per 100,000 live births, as published by NCHS. Rates for other groups are suppressed because they do not meet NCHS reliability standards.

Click column to sort
Year Black non-Hispanic White non-Hispanic Hispanic Asian non-Hispanic All women

Source: CDC/NCHS Health E-Stat 100, February 2025. Series begins in 2018 because of a change in maternal death coding.

Maternal mortality among Black women by age, 2023

The age gradient is steeper than any other cut NCHS publishes for this population.

Click column to sort
Age group Deaths per 100,000 live births

Source: CDC/NCHS Health E-Stat 100, February 2025.

Methodology

Data compiled from CDC WONDER's Multiple Cause of Death database, restricted to ICD-10 codes for pregnancy-related deaths (O00 to O99) and women aged 15 to 54. State-level aggregation follows the National Center for Health Statistics Method for State-level Maternal Mortality ratios. States with fewer than 10 events in a year are suppressed to protect privacy and statistical reliability. Rates are expressed per 100,000 live births. Race categories reflect self-reported race on death certificates.

Cite this page

APA

Black Health. (2026). Black Maternal Mortality. Black Health Data Hub. https://blackhealth.org/data/black-maternal-mortality/

BibTeX

@misc{blackhealth_blackmaternalmortality_2026,
  title     = {Black Maternal Mortality},
  author    = {{Black Health}},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://blackhealth.org/data/black-maternal-mortality/},
  note      = {Accessed July 30, 2026}
}

Direct link

https://blackhealth.org/data/black-maternal-mortality/

Embed this statistic

Copy and paste this code to embed the key statistic on your site.

<iframe src="https://blackhealth.org/data/black-maternal-mortality/embed/" width="540" height="420" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="Black Maternal Mortality"></iframe>

License: CDC/NCHS National Vital Statistics System, public domain

Back to Data Hub