[Maternal mortality and birth distribution: a possible explanation of excess mortality in France]

Maternal mortality is higher in France than in most European countries with the same health standards. The analysis of the French rates shows that the changes, between 1975 and 1991, in the birth distribution according to the age of the mothers, explain 14% of all maternal deaths in 1991. The proportion of livebirths from mothers aged 30 years and over has increased from 21% in 1976 to 37% in 1991 in France and only 32% in England and Wales. For the period 1988-1990, crude maternal mortality was 9.4 per 100,000 livebirths in France and 7.4 in England and Wales. Direct standardization removes differences between birth distributions of each country and allows to calculate a standardized mortality rate of 8.6 for the French data. The variation between the crude and the standardized French rates is explained by the fact that 18 of the 210 deaths for the considered period were associated to the older mother's age distribution than in England and Wales.