Dental caries, socio-economic development and national oral health policies.

A relationship between a population's level of socio-economic development and dental caries has often been assumed. Proxy measures such as sugar consumption have been used to reflect this. This study tests the hypothesis that there is a relationship between dental caries and the level of socio-economic development, using recent international data. It goes on to explore the implications of this relationship for the development of national oral health policies. Dental caries data was obtained from the WHO, Global Oral Epidemiology Data Bank for the period 1981-1996. Socio-economic data was obtained from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Countries were ranked according to the Human Development Index (HDI) and their GNP. The study confirms the existence of a relationship between dental caries and development. Caries is a good proxy measure for socio-economic development. Countries in the throes of socio-economic transition have the highest DMFT scores.