Mississippi Administrative Code
Title 15 - Mississippi Department of Health
Part 8 - Office of Health Policy and Planning
Subpart 90 - Planning and Resource Development
Chapter 04 - Perinatal Care
Section 15-8-90-04-400 - Natality Statistics

Mississippi experienced 36,634 live births in 2019. Of these live births, 49.8 percent (18,248) were white non-Hispanic, 42.9 percent (15,702) were black non-Hispanic, 2.7 percent (976) were other non-Hispanic and 4.7 percent (1708) were Hispanic. A physician attended 97.8 percent of all in-hospital live births delivered in 2019 (36,449). Nurse midwife deliveries accounted for 690 live births.

More than 99 percent of the live births occurred to women 15 to 44 years of age. Births to unmarried women made up 54.9 percent (20,106) of all live births in 2019; 80.6 percent (12,656) of births to black non-Hispanic women were to unmarried women. The rate for other race/ethnicity groups were 33.3 percent (6,069) for white non-Hispanic women, 43.0 percent (420) for other non-Hispanic women and 56.3 percent (961) for Hispanic women. Women under the age of fifteen (15) gave birth to forty-two (42) children: twenty-seven (27) were black non-Hispanic and nine (9) were white non-Hispanic five (5) were Hispanic, and one (1) was other non-Hispanic.

The birth rate in 2019 was 12.3 live births per 1,000 population; the general fertility rate was 62.6 live births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years.

Mississippi reported 349 fetal deaths in 2019. The black non-Hispanic fetal death ratio, which is the number of fetal deaths per 1000 live births to women in the specified age group, was more than two times that of non-Hispanic white women, with a ratio of 14.3 per 1,000 live births compared to 6.1 for non-Hispanic white women. Women aged 40 and older, had the highest fetal death ratio at 15.3 per 1,000 live births, followed by women aged 20-24 with a ratio of 10.2. MSDH requires the reporting of fetal deaths with gestation of twenty (20) or more weeks or fetal weight of 350 grams or more. MSDH does not report fetal death rates for an age group if there are less than 100 births within that age group.

The number of maternal deaths between 2016-2018 which occurred while pregnant or within forty-two (42) days of the end of a pregnancy are twenty-one (21) or on average about seven (7) maternal deaths each year.

Maternal Death is defined as a death of a woman while pregnant or within forty-two (42) days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes. The Maternal Mortality Rate is calculated as the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births and it is used to measure trends and make national/international comparisons.

Maternal death data for the last three (3) years is presented in Table 4-1 below (this data was generated using information from the MMRIA system).

Table 4-1

Maternal Death 2016 - 2018

Source: Health Data Operations and Research, Mississippi State Department of Health, 2021