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Secular Trends in Socio-economic Disparities in Edentulism: USA, 1972–2001

¹ Department of Dental Public Health Sciences, University of Washington, B509, 1959 NE Pacific Street, Box 357475, Seattle, WA 98195-7475, USA;
² Department of Epidemiology, Social Medicine Institute, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

^* corresponding author, silvajcc{at}u.washington.edu

For health care planning and policy, it is important to determine whether socio-economic disparities in edentulism, an ultimate marker of oral health, have improved over time. The aim of this study was to investigate the socio-economic disparities in edentulism between 1972 and 2001. Representative samples of the United States population, 25–74 years old, were obtained from NHANES I (1972), III (1991), and 1999–2002. Differences in the edentulism prevalence between high and low socio-economic positions (SEP) were compared. Differences in edentulism prevalence remained stable over approximately three decades (p = 0.480), being 10.6 percentage points in 1972, 12.1 percentage points in 1991, and 11.3 percentage points in 2001. Exploratory subgroup analyses suggested that disparities decreased for those individuals reporting a dental visit in the prior year and those reporting never having smoked. In conclusion, the absolute prevalence difference in edentulism between low and high socio-economic positions has remained unchanged over the last three decades.

KEY WORDS: socio-economic position • trends • poverty • health disparities • socio-economic disparities

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