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The 30-60% chance of death is the infant mortality rate, not the risk of mothers dying in childbirth. If women had even a 30% chance of dying in childbirth, it
by fwip 6y ago
The 30-60% chance of death is the infant mortality rate, not the risk of mothers dying in childbirth.
If women had even a 30% chance of dying in childbirth, it would be very difficult to maintain replacement levels of birthrates (as each woman, on average, needs to have 2 children).
- lostmsu 6y agoI think you might be reading this incorrectly. It might be not that every pregnancy had a 30% chance to kill a woman, but that the cause of death of 30% of women was child birth complications. E.g. 70% of women probably had many pregnancies and lived after, and in the other 30% some might have actually went through 2+ pregnancies before dying during one.
- tomaskafka 6y agoWell it was very common to have 5+ kids even 100 years ago. Some sources say 5-6 was an average number of pregnancies.