How much money does the Tooth Fairy leave per tooth on average in the United States?

How to get close to this number

Price it as a small ritual gift. It has to be enough to feel like an event to a child and small enough that a parent does it without thinking — which in a wealthy country means single-digit dollars, the price of a small toy or a comic.

The trend in the explanation is the genuinely surprising part: down fourteen percent in a year, one of the sharpest drops since the survey began. A discretionary household payment falling during a period of general inflation is unusual, and it suggests parents adjusting a soft norm downward as other costs rose.

The long-run comparison gives the real context: the average was around a dollar thirty when the poll began in 1998. That is roughly a fourfold rise over a period when general prices under doubled, so the payout has risen far faster than inflation — a norm that ratchets upward through social comparison rather than tracking any underlying cost.