The investment benefit of healthy teeth

Normally, we don’t think of cosmetic surgeries as something that enhances our job prospects or our income (except, maybe, if you are an actor or actress). But teeth are such a prominent feature of our appearance that getting teeth fixed can be an investment that enhances your job prospects.

There is the cliché about British people and their bad teeth even though there is no truth to this. What is true is that the Brits don’t have the obsession with glow-in-the-dark white teeth that Americans have. But when it comes to having healthy teeth, the UK ranks above the US in the league table of people with decayed, missing, or filled teeth.

Having missing or visibly bad and unhealthy teeth immediately conjures up images of destitute people and can become a barrier to social interaction. Hence, Francisco Gallego and his colleagues went to Chile and sponsored braces and other dental surgeries for a group of randomly selected poor Chileans. Then they tracked these participants a year later and three years later and compared them to a control group of poor Chileans with overall similar characteristics but who did not get dental surgery.

One of the most obvious findings is that after getting dental surgery, people felt better about themselves and gained confidence. This improvement in self-confidence and happiness was particularly pronounced for women. On top of that, people with dental surgery became healthier overall, which is a reflection of the important role teeth play in food digestion and other processes. A body that doesn’t have to deal with inflamed gums or decaying teeth has more reserves to deal with other threats, so healthy teeth improve overall health.

But importantly for my purposes, participants who received dental treatments were more likely to get a job in the year after their treatment. The likelihood of people with dental treatment getting a job was 7% higher than for people who had no treatment. Those who already had a job before they got the treatment saw their incomes rise almost 7% more in the year after the treatment than those who didn’t get it.

Whether this effect on income is due to people with dental treatments smiling more or simply being happier and more optimistic and thus more likeable to other people or whether employers subconsciously discriminate against people with bad teeth is impossible to say. But what is clear is that having healthy teeth is something that is worth a lot of money in real life.

Employment increase of poor Chileans after dental treatment

Source: Gallego et al. (2024)