A Study of Dental Health in American Children of Italian Origin and Comparable Groups in Italy

Abstract

REPORTS on the dental health of Italian children^{1 , 2} called attention to the relative freedom from caries of these children, often in poor nutritional state, as compared to American subjects of Italian origin, who have also been demonstrated to be little different in caries prevalence to the American North European ethnic group.³ These studies were separated by a ten-year interval; the assignment to ethnic groups in the American study was stated to be "somewhat arbitrary"; social-class distributions of the two groups were not comparable, and the observations were made by different investigators. For these reasons it was decided to examine the . . .