American Sex Stats

(Cross-posted from Gloria Brame's blog.)

These results surprised me:

The average American man has sex with seven women during his lifetime, compared with four male sexual partners for the average woman, according to a new federal survey that used high-tech methods to solicit candid answers on sexual activity and illegal drug use.

The average man has only seven female sex partners in his life? And the average woman has sex with four men during her whole life?

I know a lot of above-average people.

Men are far more apt to play the field when it comes to sex, the survey found; 29 percent of them reported having 15 or more female sexual partners in a lifetime, while 9 percent of women reported having sex with 15 or more men. ...

Fifteen? Fifteen is the "a lot" number? Fifteen? I crossed that in college. And didn't feel that unusual.

Though the survey results were presented by the CDC without subjective comment, they will likely provide ammunition to various parties in the national debate over sex education, cohabitation and access to birth control. The survey found about 11 percent of never-married adults had remained chaste.

Yeah! Let's get that "chaste" number down to zero! Woo hoo! Wait, that's not what the people in government have in mind?

Among the other findings:

About 96 percent of U.S. adults have had sex.

Sixteen percent of adults first had sex before age 15, while 15 percent abstained until at least age 21.

The proportion of adults who first had sex before age 15 was highest for non-Hispanic blacks (28 percent) compared with 14 percent for both Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic whites.

Six percent of blacks abstained from sex until age 21 or older, fewer than Mexican Americans (17 percent) or non-Hispanic whites (15 percent).

Twenty-five percent of women and 17 percent of men reported having one partner in their lifetime.

Despite the "high-tech methods" mentioned in the story, I think a whole lot of lying was going on here.

Comments

[thereisnorule6]

the average is probably so low since Wilt Chamberlain is dead.

[upyernoz]

i have a friends who is still celebate, and he's pushing 40. it only takes a couple of zeros in the formula to drag the average down. there are also people with religious beliefs that would restrict their sexual activity. even if we exclude all the hippocrats, that still leaves a bunch of low scorers (if you'll excuse the pun) to pull the number south.

but yeah, there's probably also some lying. the key is the disparity between the numbers for men and women. if we exclude all the homosexual contacts, the male and female numbers would have to be exactly equal. and yet, if you look at sex surveys that carve out purely hetero sex rates, you still always see a sex difference in the reported number of partners. women have a cultural incentive to underreport (to avoid seeming slutty) and men have an incentive to overreport.

[tycho]

ok, so you're probably right, in a lot of respects, but let me add a few things:

- generally I think it's probably safe to assume that the number of people who lie and say that they've had way *more* sex is probably about equal to the number of people who say that they've had way *less* sex than they've had. that doesn't mean that this skew's the gender breakdown or other statistics, (because different groups of people are more likely to lie in certain directions...)

- I wonder what they mean by sexual partners? do they mean, people with whom you've had genital contact or people with whom you have had regular/multiple genital contact?

- Figure that the typical experience is for most folks have a couple (2) relationships before they get married, and that given the divorce rate and what not, a big chunk of people have another marriage or and maybe another couple relationships via one way or another. that's... 6? which doesn't seem unreasonable...

- Speaking to the above point, is there a hint of what kind of central tendency they're measuring: in a study like this, I can imagine that it would matter.