Children living in rural or regional areas have often been found to have poorer oral health outcomes than their urban counterparts88. This is can be attributed to the fact that these children are continuing to face barriers to dental services. Research has shown that such differences are not due to the visiting pattern, but due to the course of treatment received by children and when such treatment was provided 88. There are four theories that have been trying to explain these differences; the first one suggested that rural children have poorer access to dental care that may include the travel costs and the availability of dental services within rural areas, which are characterised by fewer facilities and a shortage of health personnel 89. The second theory is that the fact that most of rural and regional areas are non-fluoridated zones, which have been occupied mainly by the Indigenous population 87,89. The third theory is that poorer rural dental health could be associated with both lower socioeconomic status and being rurally located as peoples outside the urban areas, whether in rural or regional areas has been found to have lower income (defined as less than $30 per week). Finally, the last theory revealed that such differences might be due to the existing knowledge of dental health, which could manifest itself in the visiting …show more content…
Research has been showing that richer countries have a better oral health than poorer countries90. However, each developed country has a proportion of the population that suffers poor oral health. In Australia, children of low-income families (in households earning less than $924 per week) are continuing to have a higher mean number of decayed, missing, and filled deciduous (dmft) and permanent (DMFS) than children from high-income families which can be attributed to the presence of financial barriers, particularly the costs associated with purchasing private health insurance and receiving dental services without insurance benefits91. Private health insurance can act as an important factor in determining children oral health as studies have been suggesting that children with insurance are more likely than uninsured children to visit a dental practitioner at least once a year and mostly for check up reasons while uninsured children are more likely to receive extractions and fillings92. Such inequalities remained despite the fact that these children are having a free access to dental services through SDS 90. Children from higher socioeconomic status are having a less deciduous decay experience than children from low socioeconomic status93. Among 5–6-year-olds, the average dmft of children in the lowest socioeconomic group was approximately 70% higher than for those in the