The Sexy Consequences of Economic Growth

Foreign Policy magazine teams up with Durex condoms to bring sexy back in the form of a global survey of sexual behaviors. As you can see here, it's more fun to live in a rich country. This seems like one of those times when it would make sense to mention Daniel Bell's Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Kate Sheppard notes that "Icelanders and Germans lose their virginity earliest" but to me there's surprisingly little variance in this metric, with essentially all countries falling within the 16-19 range.

One interesting point, though, is that South Africa has the sexual profile of a developed country. Unfortunately, the graphic doesn't include any other African countries, so one can't tell if South Africa is typical of its region or else if this relates to the country's unusual history with apartheid.

Comments

What would be more interesting would be an intra-country study of income and sexual partners. This might help determine the extent to which income is merely used to buy status, a positional good (preusmably lots of people value status only as a means to sex). Of course, number of sexual partners might not be a great proxy for sexual success, but it would be a start.

Posted by minderbender | September 27, 2007 1:22 PM

In addition to South Africa being the only African country (Does Steve Sailer still comment here, because I think he may like to take up this point), Indonesia is the only Muslim country and there are no Latin American countries as far as I can tell. It is interesting to see the contours of a society illustrated this way, but I am unimpressed by what is shown.

Posted by Moral Panicker | September 27, 2007 1:35 PM

Indonesia is the only Muslim country

Turkey is also included.

It also appears to be the country where people have the highest number of sexual partners.

Posted by Peter | September 27, 2007 1:41 PM

Never mind. There's Turkey and Chile.

Posted by Moral Panicker | September 27, 2007 1:41 PM

As you can see here, it's more fun to live in a rich country.

I'll accept "amount of sex" as a fair proxy for "more fun", but isn't "amount of sex" inversely correlated with "number of partners"? (Provided, of course, that the number of partners is non-zero.)

At least in my life, I had a lot more sex during the one year periods in which I had exactly one partner, than during the one year periods where I had more than one partner, because these were the periods during which I was in a long-term relationship.

I imagine this is true for most other people as well.

Posted by Brock | September 27, 2007 1:42 PM

Some of the nation-by-nation differences in sex partner counts are hard to explain. Spain and Italy seem to be fairly comparable countries in many respects, yet the average person in the latter country has had twice as many sex partners. Germany and Sweden offer a similar situation.

Posted by Peter | September 27, 2007 1:46 PM

I, too, disagree with lots of partners=more fun. By that logic, prostitutes are having more fun than anybody. My experience in the mental health field also indicates that a lot of promiscuous people are acting out their maladjustment issues and aren't having any fun either. Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalize my own comparatively very low number of partners? :-)

Posted by beckya57 | September 27, 2007 1:51 PM

Where are the girls?

I came here 8000 miles away to find them, and the only easy ones were the Anthropology and Sociology majors.

Posted by gregor | September 27, 2007 1:59 PM

"isn't 'amount of sex' inversely correlated with 'number of partners'?"

Yes, exactly. Some years ago, I saw a quite different survey showing that people in developing countries had a lot more sex than people in high-income countries. This makes some general sense: we have more stress, less time on our hands, more video games and other distractions, etc.

Posted by pdp | September 27, 2007 2:18 PM

this probably only means that, in each country, high income people marry at an older age, therefore having more time to accumulate pre-marital partners.

I would be interested to see these stats put up next to the average marrying age per income bracket.

Posted by Citizen (World) | September 27, 2007 2:23 PM

From the profiles of the orange and blue people on the charts, I'd guess the data only applies to homosexual men.

Posted by Njorl | September 27, 2007 2:26 PM

"isn't 'amount of sex' inversely correlated with 'number of partners'?"

Yes, until you have kids.

Posted by citizen (World) | September 27, 2007 2:28 PM

Didn't we do this once before, and discover the magical difference betweens means and medians?

Posted by Patrick | September 27, 2007 2:33 PM

Unfortunately, the graphic doesn't include any other African countries, so one can't tell if South Africa is typical of its region or else if this relates to the country's unusual history with apartheid.

Does it have to be apartheid? I doubt that's the only thing that distinguishes South Africa from other African nations.

Posted by Xanthippas | September 27, 2007 3:31 PM

Iceland? Didn't Matt go to Iceland back in the day?

Seriously, though, sex is probably one of the few things in Iceland that's affordable.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | September 27, 2007 4:07 PM

Thanks to Matt's use of the phrase in the post above, "Bringing Sexy Back" has now surpassed 1985's runaway slogan "Where's The Beef?" to become All-Time-Overused-Cultural-Catchphrase.

Posted by James Gary | September 27, 2007 5:22 PM

Xanthippas,
It is appartheid in a twisted way.
migrant workers, forced high densities.. those things tend to multiply chances to have more sexual partners.

Posted by nu | September 28, 2007 12:06 AM