Use for general mens’ issues
Showtime’s “The Affair”
After watching the pilot of Showtime’s new series “The Affair,” I became curious about finding stats on affairs.
A 2012 “Psychology Today” article cites a study that claims 10-13% of adults cheat, with the percentage peaking at 20% in the 40s age range. It doesn’t break down whether this includes both married and otherwise committed couples, and doesn’t break the data down by gender.
Will you watch “The Affair?”
Blue Man, Pink Woman
One interesting data point (among the many) the Census has is that of the sex ratio: the number of males for every 100 females. The 1950 Census finds a 98.6 sex ratio, i.e. 98.6 men for every 100 women, within the total U.S. population for all ages.
The ratio actually hits over 100 for a few categories, starting in childhood: Under 5 years, 5-9, 10-14 and 15-19 all registered high ratios. It begins to dip into the high 90s from age 20 to age 54. Ages 54-59 and 60-64 move back up to ratios over 100.
The next two age brackets (65-69 and 70-74) go back into the high 90s. But the last two brackets decrease more dramatically than any of the previous ones: Ages 75-84 has a sex ratio of 85.1 and ages 85+ has a 69.6 ratio. This makes sense, as men usually pass away earlier in life than women.
FiveThirtyEight NSSHB Masturbation Results 2009
Indiana’s National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB) recently crunched some data that allows us a few insights into the nation’s masturbation, broken down by age, gender and frequency. Their methodology: 5K+ Americans, ages 14-94, with data collected March to May 2009. (Data science site FiveThirtyEight made a fun graphic illustrating the results, pictured above.)
Here’s what we can glean from the findings:
Women:
Around age 40, the number of women who haven’t masturbated within the past year begins to exceed 35%, and keeps climbing up. (The 30-39 bracket topped out at 37%, but then sank to 35% for the 40-49 bracket.) The older brackets grow between 8-12 percentage points. Why is this? This could point to the fact that women of earlier generations were conditioned to think that masturbation was dirty, and don’t touch themselves on a regular basis, if at all.
Across the board, women in the 2-3 times a week and over 4 times a week fall into the minority. This could indicate achieving a comfort level with their bodies, resulting in knowing exactly which buttons to push (so to speak), and/or a higher-than-average libido.
Men:
The numbers for me only hit single digits with men ages 70+ masturbating 2-3 times a week, and men ages 50-59, 60-69, and 70+ masturbating over 4 times a week. It’s probable that the decreases are inversely correlated with age.
What’s surprising is that the highest percentages weren’t in the 18-24 age range: We hear so much in popular culture that boys masturbate most frequently (at least from anecdotal evidence of any mom with at least one son). But this study shows that the largest percentages for frequency are really falling within the 30-39 and 40-49 age brackets.
What what in the butt.
In 1953, Kinsey found that 11% of men had had anal sex within marriage, out of a sample of 5.3K men. (This sample is described “younger white adults with some college education,” so obviously we’re only getting a narrow, appropriately 1950s-esque, slice of the population.)
The male population clocked in at 74.8M (67.1M white males) in 1950. The 2010 Census counted the male population as 151M, a 101%+ growth over 60 years. If that 11% still holds, that means over 16.610M of today’s male population have had anal sex.
Of course, this isn’t a completely pure, apples-to-apples comparison (more like apples-to-pears), so I’d like to come back to this if/when I find more information.
According to a 2006 study, men and women in the United States first experienced sexual intercourse at age 17 on average.
A 2007 study by Mathmatica Policy Research for The Kinsey Institute notes that 49% of women lose it by age 17, while 46% of men lose it by the same age.
Assuming this holds true with the population recorded in the 2010 Census, here’s how that would break down:
Women:
The 2010 census recorded over 10M women ages 10-14, and over 10.7M women ages 15-19. If we assumed that each age spreads equally (i.e. the same number of 10-year-olds as the number of 19-year-olds), there would be approximately 2M women for each age 10-14, and 2.140M women for each age 15-19.
Let’s also assume that virginity loss commences at adolescence, at age 13. Within the two age brackets, ranging ages 13-17, approximately 10.42M women have lost their virginities during this timeframe.
Putting the 10.42M over the combined age brackets totaling approximately 20.7M yields approximately 50%.
Men:
The 2010 census recorded over 10.5M men ages 10-14, and over 11.3M men ages 15-19. Again, we’re assuming that the various ages spreads equally: Approximately 2.1M men for each age 10-14, and 2.26M men for each age 15-19.
Again taking the 13-17 age range, approximately 10.98M men lose their virginities during this period. This amounts to approximately 50% of the combined age bracket range.
While the average age for virginity loss in women has stayed relatively flat in the three years since 2007 to 2010, men’s average age for the same rite of passage has risen slightly. This could be due to the fact that men are losing it slightly earlier within the age spread, or that there are simply more men within this age range.
Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang 