FuturePundit points to a New Scientist piece on a new study profiling older virgins. Who is the 40-Year-Old Virgin and Where Did He/She Come From? Data from the National Survey of Family Growth:
A total of 122 (13.9%) men aged 25-45 reported never having had sex, representing approximately 1.1 million American men in this age cohort. Among female participants, a total of 104 (8.9%) women aged 25-45 reported never having sex, representing approximately 800,000 American women in this age cohort. Both men and women who reported that they attend religious services one or more times per week were more likely to be sexually abstinent, independent of their specific religious beliefs. Virgin status was also significantly associated with drinking alcohol within the past year. While a college degree in women predicted virginity, education was not associated with virginity in men. Men showed lower rates of sexual abstinence if they reported having spent time in prison or serving in the military.
New Scientist reports some very interesting details though:
Men and women who attended church at least once a week were respectively 5 and 3.9 times more likely to be virgins than those who attended church less often. Virgins of both sexes were slightly less likely to have swigged a beer in the last year, compared to non-virgins. And women with college degrees were 5.4 times more likely to be virgins than women who never got their Bachelor's....
The study also found that male homosexuals were 11 times more likely to be virgins than heterosexuals, while female homosexuals were 6 times more likely to say they were virgins than heterosexuals. African American men and women were significantly less likely to be virgins than any other ethnic group.
Just as notable as the characteristics associated with middle-aged virginity are the traits that aren't. Weight, income, and health all showed no association with virginity in men or women.
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Those numbers would put the entire U.S. population at around 65 million -- sounds like all this virginity is already having an effect!
"The study also found that male homosexuals were 11 times more likely to be virgins than heterosexuals..."
WOW. I wonder how much, if any, of this is due to religious injunctions against homosexuality.
If 13.9% of men 25-40 are virgins, how can male homosexuals possibly be 11 times more likely to be virgins?
"Weight, income, and health all showed no association with virginity in men or women." Umm, aren't they missing the potentially number 1 correlator - attractiveness? Did they not even mention this in the report?
If they are looking at middle-aged virginity why start at age 25?
Many people mature late and/or wait until marriage, which is totally different than making it to middle age a virgin.
ages 35-45 would have been more informative.
KingM:
Let
x = fraction heterosexual
y = fraction homosexual
The article implies:
x + y = .139
y/x = 11
==>
y = 11x
12x = .139
Then x = .0116
y = .127
So a solution exists. It just implies that the vast majority of these virgins are homosexuals!
The interesting aspect of this is that the highest estimates for the rate of male homosexuality place it at 5-10%. So conditional on being a virgin, the relative frequency of homosexuals rises more than 100X...from an underrepresentation of less than 1/10 to an overrepresentation of more than 10X!
In retrospect though, perhaps this isn't surprising. In high school, guys who couldn't get girls were called "fags". Mayhaps this casual verbal brutality had some embedded wisdom...
Men and women virgins are totally different from each other. Women are the higher parental investment sex, and therefore choosier sex. If a woman is a virgin it is because she chooses to be a virgin - she could lose this status in a few minutes if she really wanted-to. But of course this very seldom happens because women have evolved to be choosy about their sexual partners. The same does not apply to men. So, the sexes need to be discussed separately because the causality is different.
It seems like a fairly safe assumption that the disparity in virginity rates between heterosexuals and homosexuals at least partly reflects the higher difficulty of finding a partner for homosexuals. A heterosexual can approach a person of the opposite sex and be fairly confident that said person is attracted to their sex, and that there will be no major consequences if that isn't so. Homosexuals can't do this in most settings, particularly if potential partners aren't "out" or are selectively out.
First, virginity was defined by sexual intercourse with the opposite sex, so it's not surprising that more homosexuals were "virgins."
Second, what New Scientist reports as "male homosexuals were 11 times more likely to be virgins than heterosexuals" is actually an odds ratio, not a simple ratio of probabilities.
Furthermore, the number 11.41 is an adjusted odds ratio produced from a logistic regression analysis. The raw numbers in their survey show 45.7% of homosexuals are virgins, compared to 11.3% of heterosexuals. That would say that homosexuals are 4 times as likely to be virgins (OR=6.59), without attempting to control for other factors. They also give percentages that are adjusted because of their "complex survey design in which certain groups are oversampled". Those say that 40.4% and 11.1% of those groups were virgins, giving a probability ratio of 3.6 (OR=5.43), again with no adjusting for other factors.
Dammit, I was right again! See here for details.