Objective The purpose of this investigation is to find out a method to evaluate dental manpower resources.Meth- ods We selected population, GDP, number of dentist and number of different oral health professionals from certain internet sta- tions, published books and journals from 1996 to 2000 as our investigating data.Results Data was collected from 100 countries. Our investigation found that the design of dental manpower index to evaluate dental manpower resources was effective and conve- nient.Conclusion Dental manpower index is a good method to evaluate dental manpower resources.