The effect of socio-economic status on dental caries experience in 6, 12 and 15 year-old school children in Port Elizabeth and Despatch.

The socio-economic status of urbanised families throughout the world influences the caries experience of children. The higher the socio-economic status the lower the caries experience. Therefore, in surveys undertaken to determine caries experience of large communities it is necessary to take the above mentioned factor into consideration during the sampling process. It is, however, difficult and time consuming to classify individual children in terms of their socio-economic status. During a recent large scale survey in Port Elizabeth and Despatch, the whole area was divided into three socio-economic sub-sections decided on the basis of residential property values. All children attending school in a particular area was regarded as being from that particular socio-economic group. The results of the survey show that this method of classification into socio-economic groups yields similar results to those of more accurate methods of classification. The influence of the intervention by dental personnel on the caries experience, as expressed in the dmft and DMFT counts in 6-, 12- and 15-year-old children, is a matter of concern and needs further investigation.