In CDC survey data, about 49% of lower-income American adults report never flossing, compared with about 28% of higher-income adults.1 The figures are self-reported. Because floss costs almost nothing, price doesn't explain the gap; the likelier explanations are the things that travel with income, like regular dental visits and whether anyone ever taught the habit.
How big is the income flossing gap?
In the CDC's national health survey, NHANES, nearly half of lower-income adults (about 49%) reported never flossing at all, compared with about 28% of higher-income adults.1 NHANES doesn't just ask Americans whether they floss; it also records household income, and that divide is what appeared when CDC researchers broke the flossing responses down by income level.
Like all flossing data, these figures are self-reported, so they describe what people say about their habits rather than direct observation. But the gap itself is large, consistent, and comes from the same government survey program that produced the national flossing numbers this library is built on.
About 49% of lower-income adults report never flossing. Among higher-income adults, it's about 28%. The habit that costs the least is skipped the most by the people who can least afford what happens when prevention fails.
Is the gap about affording floss?
No: floss is nearly free, which is what makes this gap genuinely interesting rather than just another disparity statistic. A year's supply costs less than a single fast-food meal. If flossing rates tracked income because of price, this would be the one health behavior where the gap should vanish, and it doesn't.
So the divide has to be explained by something other than the price tag. The likeliest candidates are the things that quietly travel with income: whether you grew up seeing a dentist regularly, whether anyone ever physically showed you how to floss and why, and whether preventive health advice reaches your community at all. A habit like flossing is usually taught, not discovered: most people who floss learned it from a hygienist, a parent, or a dentist who took the time to demonstrate. Those touchpoints are exactly what become scarce when dental visits are irregular or out of reach.
None of this is a judgment about the people on either side of the divide. It's a description of how preventive advice actually spreads: through repeated contact with dental care, through households where the habit is modeled, through communities where the information is ambient. Where that infrastructure is thin, the habit doesn't take root, no matter how cheap the floss is.
How does this compare with national flossing rates?
The income divide sits inside a national picture that is already sobering: across the whole population, only about one in three adults reports flossing daily, a number that has barely moved across more than a decade of measurement.2 We cover that national figure in detail in how many people actually floss.
So the income gap isn't a story of one group flossing diligently while another doesn't. It's a story of a habit that most Americans haven't adopted, adopted least of all by the people facing the steepest consequences: the repair bills that arrive when prevention fails. Gum disease and tooth decay aren't distributed evenly either: the same populations that floss least also carry higher risk from other directions, a pattern we explore in who is at higher risk for gum disease.
Why is the gap also the opportunity?
Because it points at one of the most underused levers in preventive health. Read one way, these numbers are discouraging; read another way, they mark where the simplest prevention has the most room to work.
Most health disparities are expensive to close. Narrowing gaps in surgical outcomes, specialist access, or chronic disease management takes money, workforce, and years. The flossing gap is different in kind: the product costs almost nothing, the technique takes minutes to teach, and the barrier is mostly that the habit never got demonstrated and reinforced. That doesn't make closing it trivial (habit formation never is), but it makes the gap unusually addressable compared with almost anything else in health care.
That's the honest takeaway here. The cheapest health habit in existence is also the most unevenly adopted, which means the space between 49% and 28% isn't just a disparity to lament. It's a map of where the simplest kind of prevention has the most room to work.
Common questions
Do lower-income adults floss less because floss is too expensive?
Almost certainly not. Floss is nearly free (a year's supply costs very little), so price can't explain a gap this large. The likelier explanations are the things that travel with income: whether you grew up seeing a dentist regularly, whether anyone ever showed you how to floss and why, and whether preventive health advice reaches your community at all.
Are these flossing figures self-reported?
Yes. Like all flossing data in this library, the income-stratified figures come from a survey in which people describe their own habits, rather than from direct observation.1 The gap itself is large and consistent, and it comes from the same government survey program that produced the national flossing numbers.
How many Americans floss daily overall?
Across the whole population, only about one in three adults reports flossing daily2, a number that has barely moved across more than a decade of measurement. The income gap sits inside that already-low national picture rather than beside it; we cover the national figure in how many people actually floss.
Does the same pattern show up in who gets gum disease?
Gum disease and tooth decay aren't distributed evenly either, and the same populations that floss least also carry higher risk from other directions. We cover the risk factors in who is at higher risk for gum disease.
- CDC / NCHS, NHANES flossing analysis (Fleming et al.), income-stratified figures. CDC Stacks cdc/77006. Self-reported survey data.
- Fleming EB, et al. Prevalence of daily flossing among adults by selected risk factors, NHANES 2011–2014. Journal of Periodontology, 2018. CDC authors. PMC6434526. Confirmed by Liang L, Aris IM, NHANES 2009–2020, Journal of the American Dental Association, 2024. PubMed 38752966. Self-reported survey data.