The insurance company Delta Dental has something called the “Tooth Fairy Index,” which tracks how much the Tooth Fairy leaves for a tooth. The average payout jumped 33 cents to over FOUR BUCKS per tooth!
The national average now sits at $4.03, up from $3.70 last year. Though, that’s still lower than the all-time high of more than $4.50 in 2017. Kids in the Northeast are currently getting the biggest payouts at $4.35 on average. In the South, it’s 4.01, out West, $3.97 and kids here in the Midwest are getting hosed, at just $3.71 per tooth.
So is four bucks a tooth fair? Or too much? Another recent survey asked over 7,500 people: 53% said somewhere between $1 and $5 sounds about right. 11% said less than $1 per tooth, 3% said more than $20, and roughly 1 in 7 Americans think kids should get NOTHING from the Tooth Fairy!
