Often, bad teeth are blamed solely on the habits and choices of their owners, and for the poor therein lies an undue shaming [\u2026] Poor teeth [\u2026] beget not just shame but more poorness: people with bad teeth have a harder time getting jobs and other opportunities.<\/p>\n
In the age of \u201cwhitened, straightened, veneered smiles\u201d, the distance between ruined poor teeth and healthy, wealthy teeth is growing.<\/p>\n
In 1970s Australia, when Medicare\u2019s predecessor was designed, dental care was left out. Since 2014, the Child Dental Benefits Schedule<\/a> has enabled children up to 17 years of age to access free dental care at most private clinics if they\u2019re eligible for Medicare and part of a family that receives certain Australian Government payments. <\/p>\n \u201cDental into Medicare\u201d was a key Greens policy<\/a> in the 2025 federal election campaign. While this commitment to expanded coverage has stimulated public attention to the question of teeth and poverty in recent years, Grattan Institute researchers stated<\/a> in late 2024 that \u201cmore than two million Australians avoid dental care because of the cost\u201d and that \u201cmore than four in ten adults usually wait more than a year before seeing a dental professional\u201d. <\/p>\n Peter Breadon, the institute\u2019s health program director, argues that Australia\u2019s public dental system is \u201cunderfunded\u201d and \u201coverwhelmed\u201d.<\/p>\n Read more: In July 2025, the ABC reported<\/a> that around a third of Australians are eligible for free or low-cost public dental services. <\/p>\n These services receive some Commonwealth funding but are provided by state and territory governments. The ABC obtained data showing that while average wait time varies across states and territories, in some cases people have waited years to access dental care.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Left untreated, dental emergencies can result in hospital visits. Or worse. <\/p>\n The United Kingdom\u2019s intensely conditional welfare system imposes a strict \u201cwork capability assessment\u201d in a bid to limit access to disability benefits, as does Australia\u2019s through a similar assessment tool. <\/p>\n A recent book<\/a> memorialising the victims of the UK system includes details of a 57-year-old man found dead in his flat. His relatives discovered the lid of a shoebox in his cupboard holding two large molars and a pair of pliers. <\/p>\n Many Australian children aged up to 17 can access free dental care if they\u2019re eligible for Medicare \u2013 but that isn\u2019t true for adults. Published in 2014, Linda Tirado\u2019s<\/a> Hand to Mouth<\/a> documents her experiences of being poor, working low-wage, unstable jobs and raising her two children with her husband, who shares her precarious position in the US labour market. <\/p>\n In a voice that is direct, sassy, frustrated and funny, Tirado writes about the sex lives of poor people, the costly burdens of poverty (such as late payment fees), her coping mechanisms, the enjoyment she derives from smoking \u2013 and about teeth. <\/p>\n The book\u2019s title has a clever double meaning: it\u2019s about how fragile day-by-day existence is but also speaks to the shame surrounding poor teeth, which a hand shielding the mouth attempts to hide.<\/p>\n Tirado\u2019s book began life as a post on an online forum she was reading to unwind after a \u201cparticularly gruelling shift\u201d at one of her two jobs. Someone posted the question: \u201cWhy do poor people do things that seem so self-destructive?\u201d Tirado\u2019s extended response went viral; eventually, she was approached to write a book.<\/p>\n The late Barbara Ehrenreich<\/a> supplied a short, generous foreword. She declared herself \u201cwaiting for this book\u201d since the publication of her 2001 classic, Nickel and Dimed<\/a>. <\/p>\n Ehrenreich contrasted her \u201cbrief attempt\u201d to subsist on low-wage service and retail jobs with Tirado\u2019s authentic dispatches from impoverished America, lending weight to the valorisation of experiential accounts of poverty over journalistic or scholarly perspectives. <\/p>\n Increasingly, people in poverty have challenged the presumption of academics and community sector advocates to mediate their perspectives, using digital platforms, social media accounts and publishing ventures to communicate their direct experiences, embedded knowledges and political demands directly to audiences. The persistent ethical dilemmas anthropologists and journalists must wrestle with, in terms of representing others\u2019 lives, have become more heightened still. <\/p>\n Ehrenreich declared herself an outsider to the topic of contemporary poverty, Tirado the \u201creal thing\u201d. She concluded in her foreword, \u201cBut let me get out of the way now. She can tell this story better than I can.\u201d <\/p>\n NewSouth Books<\/p>\n This is also the premise of the 2024 Australian collection Povo<\/a>. <\/p>\n The storytellers in this book found their voices in workshops run across Western Sydney by Sweatshop Literacy Movement, and they write from direct experience. <\/p>\n Teeth are central to one especially compelling contribution. <\/p>\n \u201cPlot twist!\u201d, Victor Guan Yi Zhou\u2019s story, revolves around the narrator\u2019s tooth Got them at a salon\u2026 right after Mum and Dad kicked me out. Four of them. Two on the top canines. Two on each incisor. Crystal Swarovski. $150 all up. Each gem will help me manifest my dreams.<\/p>\n In the lead-up to the 2023 Budget, I attended a protest at Albanese\u2019s electoral office. I went in solidarity: the protest was organised by the Australian Unemployed Workers\u2019 Union. <\/p>\n Speakers addressing the protest were on JobSeeker and the Disability Support Pension. They described their struggles to exist on miserly income support payments and shared their frustration about the hope Albanese\u2019s election seemed at first to represent \u2013 hope that was by then fading. <\/p>\n Despite some marginal improvements to the JobSeeker payment over the past few years, Australia\u2019s payment levels still remain below the poverty line<\/a>.<\/p>\n At this protest, I met a JobSeeker recipient who was probably in her late fifties or early sixties. Fraser-era hostility to \u201cdole bludgers\u201d in Australia revolved around a masculine image of workshy youth. Today, researchers describe<\/a> a JobSeeker recipient as \u201clikely to be older, to be a woman and importantly to have [\u2026] a chronic illness or disabilities\u201d. <\/p>\n I chatted with this woman about the two days a week she spends kneeling in the bush, tugging out weeds to fulfil her \u201cmutual obligations\u201d, the signature measure of the conditional welfare state. <\/p>\n I liked her hand-painted sign, \u201cwelfare not warefare\u201d, and took a photo. <\/p>\n In the picture, her mouth is clamped tight. I admit I had noticed her chipped teeth.<\/p>\n
\n Why isn\u2019t dental included in Medicare? It\u2019s time to change this \u2013 here\u2019s how<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/file-20260129-56-em72fd.jpg\")
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\n Pixabay\/Pexels, CC BY<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/file-20260129-56-tnw1kv.jpg\")
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\ngems, which he takes every opportunity to flash. <\/p>\n