Access to Dental Care Depends on Appreciation of Demographics and Economics

The evolving demographics and economics of dental practice require consideration as the profession plans forfuture changes in the dental workforce, the makeup of the population and ongoing access to care crisis. This paper is a sampling of U.S. Census Bureau reports on demographics and an appraisal of JADA and ADA News statements regarding the economics of dental practice, as well as a review of historical developments of the profession's perceptions of dental education and government support for dental care. The trends in economics and population-based changes affecting U.S. dental practice indicate a general downturn in practice busyness, stagnation of expenditures for dental services, and a continuing increase in the proportion in minorities throughout the country and the limited ability to make changes in dental economics without altering some long-held views on the delivery of dental services. Customary populations which provided the bulwark of dental practices are being replaced by minorities.The economics of dental practices will be dependent upon (a) developing cultural and structural competence in the economics of the evolving shift in population demographics, (b) implementing changes in the economics of dental education and expansion of delivery models,