Objective: establishing the relationship between structural socioeconomic determinants, coverage of the health system, and dental caries in twenty countries. Methods: ecologic mixed analysis of secondary data of twenty countries. The inclusion criteria were countries that showed three copvalues (decayed, filled, lost) during the last four decades. The independent variables were: total expenses on health; public sanitation expenses; poverty index; literacy rate in adults; maternal mortality rate; mortality rate in children younger than 5 and life expectancy at birth. Results: Dental caries shows stable scores (cop2.4) from 1990, with a tendency toward lower scores in more developed countries and toward higher scores in less developed ones. Conclusion: the countries were classified in three groups: universalist (best indicators), dualist, and excluding (worse socioeconomic conditions). Dualist and excluding countries did now show any association between the prevalence of caries and socioeconomic determinant factors.