Cost of Childbirth Statistics (2026)

Pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum care add an average of $20,416 in health care costs for women enrolled in employer health plans, according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. Insurers paid an average of $17,674 and women paid $2,743 out of pocket. The analysis, published in September 2025, used claims for almost 2,672,900 women in employer plans from 2021 to 2023 and compared those who gave birth with women of the same ages who did not.

Inpatient and outpatient care cost $22,168 more for women who gave birth, partly offset by $1,751 less in prescription drug spending. The figures cover hospital births only and leave out balance bills and services a plan did not cover, so the true cost may be higher. Fertility treatment is not included; IVF costs are on a separate page.

The previous edition, using 2018-2020 claims, put the total at $18,865 and out-of-pocket costs at $2,854 (KFF). The two editions used different years and data files, so KFF does not present the change as a trend.

How a baby is delivered is the biggest driver of the total. Pregnancies ending in a vaginal delivery averaged $15,712 in total costs, of which $2,563 was paid out of pocket. Pregnancies ending in a C-section averaged $28,998, with $3,071 out of pocket (see the chart below).

A C-section costs 85% more in total but only 20% more out of pocket, a difference of $13,286 against $508. Peterson-KFF explains that people admitted to a hospital often reach their plan's deductible or out-of-pocket maximum, after which the insurer pays the rest.

For an insured family, the bill that matters is the out-of-pocket share, which averaged $2,743 in the Peterson-KFF data. Plan design sets most of it. The average deductible for a worker with single coverage was $1,886 in 2025, and $2,631 at firms with 10 to 199 workers against $1,670 at larger firms (KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey).

There is a ceiling. Under the Affordable Care Act, in-network out-of-pocket costs are capped at $10,600 for an individual and $21,200 for a family in 2026, rising to $12,000 and $24,000 in 2027 (HealthCare.gov). A pregnancy that spans two plan years can mean meeting the deductible twice.

An older Health Care Cost Institute analysis of 2020 claims found that 87% of people with employer coverage paid something out of pocket for the delivery, an average of $1,905, ranging from $974 in Michigan to $2,685 in Nebraska (HCCI).

Many cannot cover it from savings. Peterson-KFF found that roughly one third of multi-person households and half of single-person households lack the liquid assets to pay typical out-of-pocket costs for pregnancy and childbirth under a private plan (Peterson-KFF).

The result shows up as debt. Among women ages 18 to 35, 14.3% of those who had given birth in the previous 18 months had medical debt over $250, against 7.6% of women the same age who had not, which makes new mothers about twice as likely to carry medical debt.

Different sources give different numbers because they measure different things. Peterson-KFF averages all added spending from pregnancy through postpartum care. FAIR Health, a nonprofit that holds a large database of private insurance claims, reports the median price of the delivery episode itself: $15,728 for a vaginal birth and $19,911 for a C-section in its September 2025 benchmarks, counting facility and professional fees, anesthesia, nonstress tests, ultrasounds, lab work and a breast pump.

The Health Care Cost Institute priced the delivery admission alone at $13,393 on average in 2020, $11,453 for a vaginal birth and $17,103 for a C-section. Its metro-level prices ran from just over $6,000 in Midland, Texas, to nearly $27,000 in San Francisco-Oakland. These are older figures and should not be read as a trend next to the newer ones (see the table below).

No primary source publishes what uninsured families actually pay after discounts and payment plans. The closest figure is the billed charge, the price a hospital or doctor lists before any insurer discount. FAIR Health puts the national median billed charge at $32,738 for a vaginal delivery and $46,819 for a C-section, 2.1 and 2.4 times the in-network prices (FAIR Health).

In 2024, 4.7% of US births were self-pay, which the CDC generally treats as uninsured deliveries, up from 4.4% in 2023 (CDC/NCHS). Uninsured and self-pay patients have a right to a good faith estimate of costs if they schedule care at least three business days ahead, and can dispute a bill that comes in at least $400 above it (CMS).

Where you give birth changes the price about threefold. The median in-network cost of a vaginal delivery was $30,585 in Alaska, followed by New Jersey ($23,278), New York ($22,814), Connecticut ($21,791) and Oregon ($21,308), according to FAIR Health. Alabama was lowest at $10,275, with Mississippi close behind at $10,379.

For C-sections, Alaska was highest at $42,044, followed by Vermont, Maine, Oregon and Wyoming, and Alabama lowest at $11,281. Billed charges vary even more: Nevada had the highest median billed charge for both a vaginal delivery ($54,005) and a C-section ($78,893), even though its in-network prices were close to the national median (see the table below).

Private insurance paid for 51.8% of US births in 2024, up from 51.0% in 2023, and Medicaid for 40.2%, down from 41.5% (CDC/NCHS, Births: Final Data for 2024). Self-pay accounted for 4.7% and other sources, such as the Indian Health Service, TRICARE and charity, for 3.3%. Private insurance has been the most common payer since national data became available in 2016.

The payer differs sharply by group. Medicaid paid for 62.4% of births to Black mothers, 63.2% to American Indian and Alaska Native mothers and 57.3% to Hispanic mothers, against 26.6% for White mothers and 21.3% for Asian mothers (see the table below). Younger mothers rely on it most: Medicaid covered 77.1% of births to mothers under 20 and 30.0% of births to mothers 30 to 34.

Medicaid's share of births ranges widely by state. In 2024 it financed 61.9% of births in Louisiana, 53.6% in New Mexico and 53.4% in Mississippi, against 16.8% in Utah and 20.7% in New Hampshire (KFF).

Federal law requires Medicaid pregnancy coverage through 60 days after birth, and since April 1, 2022 states have been able to extend it to 12 months, an option made permanent in 2023. As of July 15, 2026, KFF's tracker lists 49 states and DC as having implemented the 12-month extension, with Arkansas the only state missing; Wisconsin's took effect July 1, 2026 (KFF, our count from its tracker data).

Newborns are one of the largest categories of hospital care. In 2022, 3.49 million hospital stays for liveborn infants cost US hospitals $19.6 billion, the second most expensive condition and 1 in every 10 hospital stays (AHRQ HCUP). That works out to about $5,600 per stay, by our calculation; HCUP's costs are what the hospital spent providing care, not what was billed or paid, and exclude doctors' fees.

Medicaid covered 1.54 million newborn stays at a cost of $9.6 billion, and private insurance 1.64 million stays at $8.4 billion. Self-pay or no-charge newborn stays numbered 195,000 and cost $604 million. Four of the 20 most expensive conditions for Medicaid were related to pregnancy and childbirth, including complications during childbirth ($2.0 billion) and hypertension during pregnancy ($1.5 billion).

About 1 in 10 newborns is admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit, according to the CDC figures Peterson-KFF cites. Those babies averaged $77,992 in health costs over their first 18 to 24 months, including $3,021 out of pocket, about five times the $14,268 for babies who did not go to the NICU (Peterson-KFF).

Length and level of care drive the cost. A NICU stay of four days or fewer was followed by $41,037 in total costs over the first two years, a stay longer than four days by $120,972, and a stay in a Level IV NICU, the highest level, by $117,878. Out-of-pocket costs were much flatter: $1,724 for babies with no NICU stay, $3,021 after any NICU stay and $3,265 after a Level IV stay.

The preterm birth rate was 10.41% in 2024 and, provisionally, 2025 (CDC/NCHS). A study published in Seminars in Perinatology estimated the lifetime cost of preterm births in the 2016 US birth cohort at $25.2 billion: $17.1 billion for medical care, $2.0 billion for delivery care, $1.3 billion for early intervention and special education, and $4.8 billion in lost productivity (Waitzman, Jalali and Grosse).

That came to $64,815 per preterm birth, of which $44,116 was medical care, in the authors' report to the March of Dimes (March of Dimes report). A baby born before 28 weeks carried a lifetime cost of $344,355, more than 12 times the $28,367 for a baby born at 32 to 36 weeks.

There were 3,612,012 births in the US in 2025, down less than 1% from 3,628,934 in 2024, and the C-section rate held at 32.4% (CDC/NCHS Data Brief 571). The rate rose every year from 20.7% in 1996 to a peak of 32.9% in 2009, fell to 31.7% in 2019, and has crept back up since (see the chart below).

In 2024 there were 1,173,391 cesarean births. The rate among low-risk first-time mothers was 26.6%, and 15.5% of women with a previous C-section delivered vaginally. By race, the C-section rate was highest for Black mothers (37.5%) and lowest for American Indian and Alaska Native mothers (29.8%). Labor was induced in 33.9% of births.

Births outside a standard hospital setting can cost less. In a CMS evaluation of Medicaid's Strong Start program, delivery spending for women in birth center care averaged $6,527, $1,759 or 21% less than for a comparison group, and total spending for mother and baby through the first birthday was $10,562, 16% less (CMS Strong Start evaluation, 2018).

Certified nurse midwives attended 12.0% of US births in 2024, and 1.6% of births took place at home. For doulas, 26 states and DC cover doula services in Medicaid, with payment for labor and delivery support ranging from $459 to $1,500 across states as of April 2026 (NASHP). No primary source publishes typical private-pay prices for doulas or midwives.

Federal law bars group health plans from limiting a hospital stay after childbirth to less than 48 hours after a vaginal delivery or 96 hours after a C-section (US Department of Labor). Since January 2022, the No Surprises Act has prohibited surprise bills from out-of-network providers when a patient is admitted to an in-network hospital. KFF had previously estimated that 10% of in-network maternity admissions included an out-of-network charge.

No state had fully eliminated cost sharing for maternity care as of March 2025, according to a Washington Office of the Insurance Commissioner study, though Maryland, Massachusetts, California and New York had considered or passed related laws. The study estimated that removing all maternity cost sharing in Washington would raise premiums by $2.83 per member per month, about 0.4%. A federal bill to bar cost sharing for prenatal, childbirth and postpartum care was introduced in May 2025 and has not been enacted.

For a family with employer coverage, the data points to an average out-of-pocket bill of $2,563 to $3,071 for the pregnancy and birth, plus about $1,500 to $1,700 out of pocket for a baby's care over the first two years, with the plan's out-of-pocket maximum as the ceiling. The total price, $20,416 on average, matters most to families without insurance or with a high deductible. Childcare, which costs far more over time, is covered on the childcare cost statistics page, and the full cost to age 17 on cost of raising a child statistics.

Families saving for these costs in a brokerage account can use Walnut, an AI investing app, to see how a connected account is doing. The figures on this page describe what births cost; they are not medical, insurance or financial advice.