Maternal mortality · deaths per 100,000 live births · 1915–2020 · log scale
Every peer nation kept making birth safer. Around 1990, the United States turned the other way.
Eleven wealthy countries, one line each. For most of a century they fall together — from a world where birth killed hundreds of women per 100,000 down toward a shared floor. Then a single line — the United States — peels off and climbs. Watch the century close, then the fork open.
United States Peer nations (10) U.S. 2007–2018: no continuous official rate (interpolated)
1915
Deaths per 100,000 live births. Sources: NCHS (Hoyert 2007), Our World in Data long-run compilation, and OECD Health Statistics. Logarithmic axis; peer-nation lines are drawn with a centred 5-year weighted moving average; the United States line is unsmoothed annual data. The dashed U.S. 2007–2018 segment is interpolated between real endpoints. Read the direction, not the exact height. Full methods & sources →
For a century, the United States broke from a world where birth was lethal. Then it broke from everyone who kept going.