How much should the Tooth Fairy leave in a cost of living crisis? Study shows payments are down 10% in last five years

As it turns out, it’s not just us regular folk who are feeling the pinch with the cost of living crisis, but the magical beings among us as well.

A new study has found that payments from the Tooth Fairy are down by 10% compared to five years ago with the average payment per tooth just £1.90 compared to £2.10 in 2018.

The survey of 5,000 parents by Dental Phobia pinpointed London as having the flushest of fairies, with the average tooth fetching £2.30, a figure that rose to as much as £5 in boroughs such as Kensington.

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Some children even get £10 per tooth, with 9% of survey respondents admitting their child gets a fair amount of dough per fallen tooth.

The lowest Tooth Fairy payments came from Newcastle, with kids finding just 90p under their pillow from the elusive fairy.

Nearly a third (27%) of children receive £1 per tooth, while 25% receive £2. Just 14% get less than £1, while 12% get £5, 9% get £10, 3% get between £10 and £20, and 2% get more than £20. Sadly nearly one in 10 (8%) never get a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

So what do the children spend their well-earned cash on? A third of parents (36%) said their child bought sweets, while 31% spent it on toys, 21% put it into savings, 7% bought books, and 5% bought clothes.

Read more: You won't believe how much kids are getting from the tooth fairy these days

“The Tooth Fairy is feeling the pinch like the rest of us,” says dentist Rhona Eskander of the Chelsea Dental Clinic.

“Payments are down by 10% over the last five years, but encouragingly the Tooth Fairy is still coming out almost every time a child loses a tooth. It is just that they are leaving a little less money.

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“As dentists, we find that parents and children who are most excited by the Tooth Fairy and make sure that it visits with each lost tooth also take dental care most seriously, too. Tooth Fairy children brush their teeth most regularly with little parental pressure and suffer the least tooth decay. The Tooth Fairy makes caring for your teeth a positive part of childhood development and it can reduce the fear of the dentist for many children.”

Eskander says most children have a full set of 20 baby teeth by the time they are three years old, and start losing them at the age of five or six. It can then take six or more years to grow a full set of 28 adult teeth – 32 counting wisdom teeth that arrive in our late teens or early twenties.

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