Analyses of dental status among old-age pensioners in Norway

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the extent to which dental status of Norwegians aged 65 and above living at home (n=1493) could be predicted by the independent variables, age, region and education. Dental status was divided into "own teeth" versus "edentulous". Separate analyses were performed for women and men. Altogether, 57.3% were edentulous, 23.7% reported "a few own teeth" and 19.9% "many own teeth". Of the women 62.9% were edentulous as compared to 50.4% of the men. Education was the most important predictor for dental status among both women (0.31) and men (0.23) as measured by the direct effects. Among women, region (0.23) and age (0.19) followed in descending order, while for males these predictors were not statistically significant. The predictors could explain 19% of the variance in female dental status as compared to 6% among men. The probability of being an edentulous woman could to a great extent be regarded as the additive effects of the three predictors. However, an additive model did not provide an adequate understanding of the empirical data among men, due to interaction effects. Thus the calculation of interaction effects provided additional insight into the social processes underlying the transition to the edentulous state.