Caries is a disease of progressive destruction of the hard tissues of the teeth.
The data comparison also demonstrates the substantial narrowing of differences in untreated decay in the mouths of disadvantaged children and the rest of the population. Untreated caries in the disadvantaged declined from 2.14 to 0.46 untreated decayed teeth between the early 1970s and the early 1990s. Although oral health differences based on poverty and race still exist, great improvements have been made over the last 20 years. For children 12 to 18 years old, about 83 percent of those above the poverty level were without decay, and almost 67 percent of those at or below the poverty level did not have any untreated decayed permanent teeth. While this is very good news, dental caries is still the major oral disease among children.