HEALTH SERVICES UTILIZATION |
66 |
While the majority (67.2 percent) of women visited a dentist during 2000, approximately one-third had not visited a dentist for a year or more. Hispanic and Black women (41.1 percent and 40.2 percent, respectively) were more likely than White women and women of other race/ethnicity (29.5 percent and 33.2 percent respectively) to have gone without dental care for a year or more. Less than 1 percent of women had never seen or talked to a dentist, though Hispanic women were more likely than women of all other race and ethnic groups never to have seen a dentist.
Women with family incomes of at least $20,000 were more likely to have seen or talked to a dentist in the last year (73.3 percent) than were women with lower family incomes (48.0 percent). Among lower-income women (less than $20,000) 50.5 percent had gone a year or more since they last saw a dentist, 48 percent saw a dentist in the last year, and 1.5 percent reported never having seen a dentist.