Teething troubles: Best and worst states for dentistry revealed

In the U.S., February is National Children’s Dental Health Month. To mark this forthcoming detail in the medical calendar, the personal-finance website WalletHub has released a report on 2025’s States With the Best & Worst Dental Health.

The review highlights places that offer high quality and budget-friendly dental services. This is an important determination given, US-wide, 35 percent of adults have gone over a year without seeing a dentist, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
 
In order to determine where people have the healthiest teeth and gums in the U.S., WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 25 key metrics.

The data set ranges from the share of adolescents who visited a dentist in the past year to dental treatment costs to dentists per capita. The data ranges considerably, with certain areas of the U.S. having a higher density of dental professionals and some states providing fluoridated water (which can help prevent tooth decay) to nearly all residents. Yet other states lag considerably behind.

The outcomes are:

Delving into the rankings, the analysis reveals that Rhode Island has the lowest share of people who could not afford more dental visits due to the cost, which is two times lower than in Georgia, the state with the highest.

With dental service provision, the District of Columbia has the most dentists per capita, which is 3.3 times more than in Tennessee, the state with the fewest.

The District of Columbia also has the highest share of the population receiving fluoridated water, which is 11.8 times higher than in Hawaii, the state with the lowest.

As to the quality of an individual’s teeth and gums, Minnesota, Hawaii and Illinois have the lowest share of adults with poor or fair oral condition, which is 1.8 times lower than in Montana, the state with the highest.