By Dr. Robert Kelly, D.M.D. General Dentist, McKenzie Dental
Recently, one of my children lost one of his routine baby teeth and it reminded me of an article I did many years ago that tracked the inflation of the Tooth Fairy payout for teeth. There was a slow trend upwards over the years, as one would expect.
It made me curious, since we have experienced a lot of inflation in the past few years, to investigate if the Tooth Fairy has had to recalibrate their payouts for teeth or not. I found a recent chart and article from Delta Dental that used surveys to come up with a good average Tooth Fairy price per tooth over time.
As you can see in the chart, the Tooth Fairy does stay on top of things and recalibrates over time! It even somewhat follows the rise of the S&P 500 stock market index.
As you can see in the chart, things really took off after 2012 and started climbing a lot quicker. You can also see a little dip recently this past year. Maybe the Tooth Fairy was tightening the purse strings in response to higher costs or maybe because inflation has slowed down a lot this past year she was readjusting everything again.
The surveys also sample differences in regions of the country. Surprisingly the West had a big jump from last year and is now the highest payout with an average of $8.54. Next was the Northeast at $6.87, followed by the South at $5.51. Finally, the Midwest came in at $3.63, which is quite a bit lower than the western average.
Hopefully, my son does not read my article and see that in the West, kids were getting $8-9 per tooth. That’s a lot. He only got 5 bucks from me!
Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.