The Economic Value of Teeth

Healthy teeth are a vital and visible component of general well-being, but there is little systematic evidence to demonstrate its effect on labor market outcomes. In this paper, we examine the nature and magnitude of the effect of oral health on labor market outcomes by exploiting variation in access to fluoridated water during childhood. The politics surrounding the adoption of water fluoridation by local water districts suggests exposure to fluoride during childhood is arguably exogenous to other factors affecting earnings. We find that children who grew up in communities with fluoridated water earn approximately 4% more as adults than children who did not. The effect is larger for women than men, and is almost exclusively concentrated amongst those from families of low socioeconomic status (SES). We find that occupational sorting and consumer discrimination explains the mean impact of oral health on earnings, but employer discrimination explains the impact for low SES individuals. Preliminary and incomplete. Please do not cite.