世論 What Japan Thinks

I saw a link to quite a surprising survey (not really a poll, but it’s an interesting statistic nonetheless) about the state of Japanese teeth, in particular children’s teeth.

According to a survey by a Nagoya dentist, in 1997 about 4.9% of children were missing adult teeth completely. However, last year the figure had ballooned to 11.6%, and on average each child was missing one or two adult teeth (excluding any wisdom teeth), with the worst case being missing six, over 20% of them!

The story provides no explanation that I can see for why, but it does seem a worrying statistic!