Pew Research: Home Birth Trends (2022)
Home birth at a 30-year high and accelerating
Home births increased 77% from 2004-2017, then 19% more during COVID. 2021: 1.41% of births at home, highest since 1990.
The Pew Research Center tracked US home birth rates over time. Home births rose 77 percent between 2004 and 2017. They rose another 19 percent during the COVID period.
In 2021, 1.41 percent of US births took place at home, the highest rate since 1990.
The growth has been driven primarily by white, educated, higher-income women, but the rate of increase has been steepest among Black women, who are responding to the racial disparities in hospital outcomes that show up across the maternity care data. Pew's analysis did not assess outcomes, just rates. The trend is one of the few statistics in US maternity care that is moving in a direction the public health establishment would broadly consider positive.
77%
Increase 2004-2017
19%
Further rise during COVID
1.41%
2021 US home birth share
30 years
Highest rate since 1990
Why it matters
A category of birth that has been actively discouraged by the dominant US obstetric organizations is the one rising fastest. That tells you something about how mothers are reading the data themselves.
This is one finding from the research library behind How to Birth a Mother. Everything here traces back to a study, a dataset, or a systematic review.