The Data is Clear: People Are Having Less Sex
And it’s not just the youths!
by RYAN BURGE
There was a bit of kerfuffle on the internet back in August surrounding a piece published with the title “Failure to Launch: Why Young People are Having Less Sex.” Using a survey of Californians aged 18-30, the percentage reporting no sexual partners in the prior year reached an all-time high of 38%.
Here’s an even more eye-raising statistic: in 2021, among that same age group, just 9% of women reported having at least 2 sexual partners. It was 12% of younger men. The widespread belief that these young adults are having a ton of casual sex is demonstrably false. The common perception of ‘sexually promiscuous’ likely doesn’t align with a 25-year-old having only two sexual partners in a year, I’d guess.
But, let me expand the scope of the inquiry even further. It’s not just young people having less sex; this trend spans virtually all adult age groups. People are having less sex.
Here’s how I came to that revelation: it started with the graph below. I had already written the code to do the analysis in prior waves of the General Social Survey and wanted to update the results from the last two years of the GSS.