End the decay: The cost of poor dental health and what should be done about it

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The Brotherhood of St Laurence has released a report analysing the costs of poor dental health on the economy and those least able to afford dental care.

Millions of people are financially locked out of Australia’s expensive dental health system, undermining their capacity to gain and keep employment and at an annual cost to the economy of more than $1.3 billion.

The report, “End the Decay: The cost of poor dental health and what should be done about it”, analysed existing data to estimate the disease burden of untreated dental conditions - and the resulting economic burden. The report’s authors, Professor Jeff Richardson from Monash University and Bronwyn Richardson from Campbell Research and Consulting, found that the direct and indirect costs to the economy are significant.

Among the report’s findings are:

• The direct and indirect costs to the economy of poor dental health are between $1.3 billion and $2 billion annually.
• Hospital admissions from dental conditions are the largest category of preventable acute hospital admissions, costing the health system $223 million each year.
• At least 1 million work days and at least 600,000 school days are lost each year because of poor dental health costing the economy at least $660 million in lost productivity.
• Children in the lowest socioeconomic areas had 70% more decay in their teeth than children in the highest socioeconomic areas.
• Adults on the lowest incomes were almost 60 times more likely to have no teeth than those on the highest incomes. While the prevalence of people without teeth has fall to almost zero (0.3%) in the top 25% of incomes, 17.3% of adults in the lowest 25% of incomes had no natural teeth.
• Indigenous people were twice as likely to have untreated decay in comparison to non-indigenous people.
• Nearly a quarter of adults report feeling self conscious or embarrassed because of oral health problems.

Download the full report End the Decay: The cost of poor dental health and what should be done about it

Download our media release

See more about the Brotherhood's social inclusion work.