Tooth fairy gives kids in London almost a pound more than kids in Bristol
Posted on 18 November 2016
Tooth Fairy inflation running at 7% with UK average now £1.42 per tooth
- Scottish teeth no longer the most valuable – kids in Northern Ireland now get the most at £2.14!
- Children in Bristol get just 85p and 44% of Welsh kids get NOTHING
- 8% drop in number of homes visited by the tooth fairy
If you’re going to lose a tooth, make sure you get to Northern Ireland, because the tooth fairy is more generous there than any other region in the UK, according to the latest research from SunLife.
As part of its Cash Happy report, SunLife looked at the day to day finances of more than 3,000 UK households and found that, on average, the tooth fairy leaves £1.42 under children’s pillows across the UK – an 7% increase on last year’s average of £1.33.
Does the South West have the least valuable teeth?
But this amount varies wildly across the country; kids in Northern Ireland receive the most – more than £2 on average, with children more likely to get £2 or £3 (36%) than £1 (32%). The next most valuable teeth are in London where they are worth £1.82 on average, and kids are just as likely to receive £2, £3 or £5 as they are to receive £1.
In comparison, children in the South West get £1.12 on average and are more likely to get 20p or 50p than £2 or more. Children in Bristol get the least, just 85p on average with one in ten receiving just 20p!
Two in five get a £1 coin
While the average amount left under pillows is £1.42, the most common coin left is £1, which is unchanged from last year. Two in five kids get £1 and one in eight get £2. One in 11 get 50p or less, while one in 14 get £3 or more. A third don’t get anything.
Overall, two thirds (67%) of UK homes with kids get visits from the tooth fairy, a drop of 6% on 2015 when almost three quarters were visited (73%). The tooth fairy is the busiest in Scotland where 79% of kids receive a visit and the North West where 77% do, while in Wales it is much lower - just over half (56%) of kids are visited by the tooth fairy.
Kids with three siblings get the most!
Perhaps surprisingly, families with more children actually receive more from the tooth fairy than families with one or two children. In fact, households with four kids get £1.68 on average and one in ten get £5. While families with three kids get £1.24 on average, those with two get £1.31 and only children get £1.60.
Ian Atkinson at SunLife said: “In an increasingly cashless society, the Tooth Fairy still does it the old-fashioned way – leaving cold hard cash for the nation’s children (bar the occasional IOU).
“It’s a good way for children to start learning the value of money – and of teeth, with a mouthful worth more than £40 in Northern Ireland. It’s also an early opportunity to get children into the savings habit… even if some are likely to spend it on sweets, encouraging further tooth loss.”