Dental expenditures and source of payment by race/ethnicity and other sociodemographic characteristics

OBJECTIVE: This study presents race/ethnic-specific distributions of dental expenditures and their sources of payment by socioeconomic characteristics among US working-age adults. METHODS: Data for persons aged 19-64 years from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES) (n = 18,696) were used to calculate mean dental expenditures and their 95 percent confidence intervals. RESULTS: Dental expenditures were reported by 44.5 percent of participants. Non-Hispanic whites and persons with higher income were more likely to report dental expenditures than their counterparts. Among persons reporting expenditures, those with lower income had lower expenditures than higher-income persons. No differences in the amount of expenditures by race/ethnicity, sex, or employment status were observed. In all race/ethnic groups almost half the expenditures were paid out-of-pocket and one-third by dental insurance. CONCLUSION: While sociodemographic characteristics determined who had dental expenditures, they did not determine the amount or source of those expenditures.