Is dental spending actually declining when you adjust for inflation? Yes, and it is worse than the headline numbers suggest. The ADA shows growth in dental expenditures slowing from about 3.9 percent over a decade down to 1.8 percent, then into negative territory after the recession. But that data was never adjusted for inflation. Go back and correct for it and the picture changes. We had a real run of around eight percent growth for about ten years, then from 2002 onward we slid into a steep negative trend, roughly 8.2 percent a year on a real basis. That is not [...]