Doing better in the 1990s--but not by much

American Dental Association and federal agency reports indicate that during the past fifteen years, 1) the number and size of dental establishments have continued to increase, and 2) the number of dental assistant and dental hygienist program enrollees have fluctuated but remain lower than in earlier years (particularly dental assistant enrollees). Despite a tighter market for dental auxiliaries and improving dental practitioner income, dental assistant wages in the 1980s did not maintain parity with the rates of inflation and barely outpaced the levels of inflation in the first half of the 1990s. Dental hygienists fared only slightly better in the '90s.