While oral health has improved in recent years, awareness of dental care is not yet obvious to everyone. Despite free consultations for children and teenagers since 2007, workers’ children are not used to visit the dentist regularly. The DREES study finds that 8 children of executives out of 10 consulted a dentist during the year compared to only 6 children of workers.
As a consequence of this social inequality, if the share of caries-free children increased from 12 to 56% in thirty years, the children of workers are those who have benefited the least from this progress. Thus in 2006, 90% of 6-year-old children of executives never had cavities compared with 70% of workers’ children.
From kindergarten, the gap widens between social categories since 23% of the children of workers have at least one untreated cavity, against 4% of the children of executives.
According to the DREES, these social inequalities in the use of dental care can be explained by “lack of knowledge [du dispositif de gratuité] added to the fear of visiting the dentist”.
Serious consequences in adulthood
The absence of regular consultations in childhood can be detrimental in the long term. It can prevent the early identification of dental problems in adulthood, which nevertheless makes it possible “to avoid heavy and expensive dental treatments”, explains the report. Not to mention that poor oral health can have “serious consequences on the general state of health, both physical and psychological”, continues the study pointing to the risk of cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, early childbirth and obesity. .