More or Less: Behind the Stats How a tick box doubled the US maternal mortality rates.
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Jun 29, 2024 Saloni Dattani, a researcher at Our World in Data, joins Tim Harford to uncover how a simple tick box on death certificates led to a doubling of US maternal mortality rates. The podcast explores the impact of changes in data collection methods, discrepancies in maternal mortality data due to checkbox usage, and the implications of counting all deaths with the checkbox ticked as maternal deaths.
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Rising Maternal Mortality Rates in the US
- The US maternal mortality rate has been rising since the early 2000s, unlike most developed nations.
- This rise has caused concern and been described as a maternal mortality crisis.
The Pregnancy Checkbox Problem
- A checkbox introduced on death certificates to indicate pregnancy was intended to improve data collection.
- However, its implementation in the US, where a ticked box automatically classified a death as maternal, skewed the data.
Checkbox Skews National Data
- The gradual introduction of the checkbox across US states over 15 years made the national maternal mortality data unreliable.
- Research suggests the actual mortality rate remained flat, and the apparent increase was solely due to the checkbox.