OB/GYN statistics describe the health of pregnancy and childbirth, the care people receive before delivery, and the clinicians available to provide that care. The latest figures below focus on the United States, with measurement years ranging from 2021 to 2024 and workforce projections extending to 2038. They show both national patterns and substantial differences by race, age, and location.
Table of contents
- Maternal mortality
- Differences by race and age
- Cesarean and birth timing
- Prenatal care and coverage
- Smoking during pregnancy
- OB/GYN workforce and access
Maternal mortality
The U.S. maternal mortality rate was 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023, according to the CDC’s Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2023. That was lower than the 22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births recorded in 2022. The 2023 total included 669 maternal deaths and 3,596,017 live births.
Maternal mortality rates are population-level measures. They count deaths related to pregnancy or its complications against live births, rather than describing the individual risk for a particular patient. Even so, the measure is useful for evaluating patterns in care and outcomes across large groups.
The CDC’s 2023 figures also show how the national rate differs among racial groups:
| Group | Maternal mortality rate, 2023 | Maternal deaths, 2023 | Live births, 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| All U.S. women | 18.6 per 100,000 | 669 | 3,596,017 |
| Black women | 50.3 per 100,000 | 247 | 491,494 |
| White women | 14.5 per 100,000 | 259 | 1,787,051 |
| Hispanic women | 12.4 per 100,000 | 117 | 945,200 |
| Asian women | 10.7 per 100,000 | Not stated in supplied figures | Not stated in supplied figures |
The counts and rates answer different questions. For example, the CDC recorded more maternal deaths among White women than among Black women in 2023, while the reported rate was higher among Black women. A count reflects the number of deaths in a group; a rate accounts for the number of live births used as the denominator.
Differences by race and age
Age was another major dividing line in the CDC’s 2023 maternal mortality statistics. The rate was 12.5 deaths per 100,000 live births for women younger than 25, 18.1 for women ages 25–39, and 59.8 for women ages 40 and older. The corresponding numbers of live births were 759,713, 2,689,250, and 147,054.
The figures for older women also varied by race. Among women age 40 and older, the maternal mortality rate was 132.9 deaths per 100,000 live births for Black women, 56.6 for White women, and 35.8 for Hispanic women. These are age-specific and race-specific statistics; they should not be read as a prediction for an individual pregnancy.
The CDC reported 2023 live-birth totals of 491,494 for Black women, 1,787,051 for White women, and 945,200 for Hispanic women. The supplied mortality report did not provide a maternal-death count for Asian women in the figures summarized here, although it did report an Asian maternal mortality rate of 10.7 per 100,000 live births.
Taken together, the age figures identify a clear pattern in the reported national data: the rate for women 40 and older was higher than the rates for the two younger age groups. The race-specific figures show that the pattern also differs within an age group, particularly for Black women age 40 and older.
Cesarean and birth timing
The CDC’s Births: Final Data for 2023 reported a U.S. cesarean delivery rate of 32.3%. Several related measures provide more detail about how that national percentage is defined. The low-risk cesarean delivery rate was 26.6%, the primary cesarean delivery rate was 22.8%, and the vaginal birth after previous cesarean delivery rate was 15.1%.
Cesarean delivery rates also differed by age and race in the 2023 CDC data. The rate was 37.0% for Black women, 32.0% for Hispanic women, and 31.1% for White women. It was 48.1% for women age 40 and older and 18.9% for females younger than age 20.
These measures are not interchangeable. A primary cesarean rate concerns a first cesarean delivery, while a vaginal birth after previous cesarean rate concerns a vaginal delivery after an earlier cesarean. The low-risk measure is a separate population measure. Comparing them directly as if they described the same group would obscure their definitions.
The same CDC report divided 2023 births by timing:
- Preterm births accounted for 10.41% of births.
- Early preterm births accounted for 2.76%.
- Late preterm births accounted for 7.64%.
- Early-term births accounted for 29.84%.
- Full-term births accounted for 54.94%.
- Late-term births accounted for 4.56%.
- Post-term births accounted for 0.26%.
The categories describe gestational timing, not the quality of an individual birth or the reason for delivery. The CDC reported them as percentages for U.S. births in 2023.
Prenatal care and coverage
In 2023, 76.1% of U.S. births involved prenatal care that began during the first trimester, according to the CDC’s Births: Final Data for 2023. Late or no prenatal care accounted for 7.0% of births. The remaining births were not assigned to either of those two supplied categories here.
The first-trimester figure varied by race. It was 82.4% among White women, 68.9% among Hispanic women, and 66.3% among Black women. Late or no prenatal care was 22.4% among Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander women. These measures describe when care began or whether it was late or absent; they do not identify the reasons for the differences.
The CDC also reported how births were covered financially in 2023:
| Birth coverage | Share of births |
|---|---|
| Private insurance | 51.0% |
| Medicaid | 41.5% |
| Self-pay | 4.4% |
| Other insurance | 3.2% |
Private insurance was the largest listed coverage category at 51.0%, followed by Medicaid at 41.5%. Self-pay births represented 4.4%, and births covered by other insurance represented 3.2%. These percentages describe coverage status for births in the CDC report, not the total number of people enrolled in each insurance program.
Smoking during pregnancy
The CDC reported that women who gave birth and smoked at any time during pregnancy accounted for 3.0% of births in 2023. Those who smoked during the first trimester accounted for 2.9%.
The two measures overlap because smoking during the first trimester can also be smoking at any time during pregnancy. They therefore should not be added together. Both are percentages reported for women who gave birth in the United States in 2023, and neither figure describes smoking frequency, quantity, or the timing of smoking beyond the category named by the CDC.
OB/GYN workforce and access
HRSA’s State of the U.S. Maternal Health Workforce, 2025 reported 45,790 obstetrics and gynecology physicians in the United States in 2023. The same report counted 14,540 nurse midwives in 2024 and 200,733 maternal health registered nurses in 2021. Because these counts refer to different measurement years, they should not be treated as a single-year workforce snapshot.
The population needing reproductive and maternal health services is also expected to change. HRSA reported 76,533,440 women of childbearing age in 2023. Its figures projected 77,811,406 in 2030 and 77,939,248 in 2038. The 2030 and 2038 values are projections, not observed population counts.
HRSA projected an OB/GYN physician shortage of 7,660 full-time equivalents by 2038, with 86% adequacy. In the same workforce analysis, the projected family medicine physician shortage was 39,060 full-time equivalents with 76% adequacy, and the projected general internal medicine physician shortage was 20,660 full-time equivalents with 83% adequacy. HRSA projected a surplus of 4,610 nurse-midwife full-time equivalents by 2038, with 140% adequacy.
“Adequacy” and “shortage” are workforce-model terms in the HRSA report. They are not counts of open appointments, and they do not mean that every community has the same level of access. The projection describes expected supply relative to modeled need at the national level.
Geographic access can be limited even when a national workforce count appears large. HRSA reported that, in 2023, 10,139,368 women lived in U.S. counties with no OB/GYN physicians. Of those women, 4,043,632 were women of childbearing age. These are observed population and county-access figures for 2023, while the workforce shortage and adequacy figures above are projections for 2038.
The workforce numbers therefore point to two separate issues: how many clinicians are available nationally and where those clinicians practice. The HRSA data show a projected national OB/GYN physician shortage alongside a large 2023 population living in counties without an OB/GYN physician. For readers interpreting OB/GYN statistics, keeping the measurement year, geography, population, and projected-versus-observed status visible is essential.