Abstract: Objective To analyze the dental caries status and oral health behavior of 5-yearold local and migrant children in Shanghai, and to provide information supports for designing oral health care programs and making relevant policies. Methods By using equalsized stratified randomly sampling method, this survey was carried out on the oral health status of 575 children aged 5 in Shanghai. Parents were investigated by questionnaire. Results The prevalence of caries among 5yearold children was 65.74%, mean DMFT score was 3.35, and the prevalence of local children was obviously lower than migrant children (P<0.05). The caries filling constituent ratio was 12.57%, and there was a significant difference between migrant and local children(P<0.01). Compared with local children, more migrant children took sweet snacks before sleep (P<0.05). Only 19.44% of migrant children brushed their teeth twice or more daily, which was significantly lower than local children (P<0.01). The percentage of migrant children who had never visited a dentist was higher than that of local children (P<0.01). Conclusions The dental caries status and oral health behavior of migrant children are obviously worse than local children in Shanghai. To promote children’s oral health further, it is necessary to strengthen public oral health services for migrant children, take preventive measures and target health education at migrant groups in the future.

Key words: migrant children, dental caries, oral health behavior