High vs low mating success among never-married men

This graph displays the number of sex partners since age 18 for never-married men ages 30-39.  You can see that this is a very diverse group.  More than 10% have had zero partners ("40 year-old virgins"), and 41% have been with five or fewer.  By contrast, 35% report a dozen or more partners.

If we divide these men into a low (0-5) and high group (12+), the median for the low group is 2, and it's 25 for the high group. That's 12.5 times more women than the low group.

The high group --roughly one-third of never-married men -- looks like it is following the high mating effort strategy that was discussed in the last post, while the low group, with a median of two women, seems to be doing poorly at any strategy.  

Occupation and lifetime sex partners

Here'a a table of the median lifetime sex partners for the occupations with at least 100 GSS sampled white men. I use median since the mean is completely thrown off by the small number of men with dozens and dozens of partners. Keep in mind that the overall mean for white men is about 6.

Managers, salesmen, and those with muscular jobs are toward the top (although supervisors and proprietors, sales occupations is an anomaly) and computer geeks, low status janitors, and farmers are at the bottom. I suspect farmers are more traditional and marry early.

Median number of sexual partners: Feminist X makes a good point that we shouldn't assume that a given number of sexual partners now and in the past measures the same trait. The same guy who had two partners in the past might have 20 partners now.

My earlier analysis only covers the past three decades, so I think the period is short enough to assume that we're measuring the same thing in each of the three decades (80s, 90s, 00s). But it's always better to check.

The mean number of sex partners for white men ages 30 to 39 looks like it hasn't changed much since 1980, but the mean is a poor statistic to use because it is very sensitive to the handful of guys with many, many partners. The median is much better: it was seven partners in the 80s and 90s, and it's six in this decade. Cultural conditions don't seem to have changed much.

Damn, dem fat chicks is gettin' some:  I looked at GSS data to see which single people have the most sex partners in a year: skinny or fat ones.  Here's the mean (it's an index, so it's not quite the same as the mean number of partners):

Mean sex partners score

Males, N = 936

Below average weight 1.44

Average 1.80

Above average 1.44

Considerably above average 1.11

Females, N = 1,099

Below average weight 1.38

Average 1.24

Above average 1.09

Considerably above average 1.50

Average guys do the best, while the really fat ones come in last.  Seems about right.  

But the chicks.  When I say big sluts, I mean big as much as I mean sluts.      

God as chastity belt: I saw a Google ad on this blog asking if you want atheist women. That made me wonder, for some odd reason, if atheist women put out more than others.

The General Social Survey asked 4,423 women about the total number of sexual partners they have had in the past 5 years, as well as asking them about belief in God. Here are the means (it's actually an index: for example, someone with more than 100 partners--the highest category--is scored an 8):


Mean index of sex partners

Doesn't believe in God 1.94
No way to find out 1.76
There is some higher power 1.78
Believes sometimes 1.57
Believes but doubts 1.55
Knows God exists 1.27


The pattern is clear. Atheist women have the most sex partners, so guys, it pays to cruise for chicks at Humanist Society commitment ceremonies. Females with full confidence in a God being out there have a significantly lower average than the other groups. In the old days they strapped a chastity belt on a girl. Now, God must use like a force field over the area.

My daughter gets the fear of God put into her on a daily basis, thank you.

Does getting arrested help or hurt your chances of getting laid? Is it really true that that girls are attracted to bad boys? The General Social Survey asked 168 men ages 18 to 30 if they were arrested in the past year, and they were also asked how many sex partners they had during the same time period. Here are the mean number of partners:


Mean number of sexual partners in the past year

Arrestees 3.04
Non-arrestees 1.67

No competition. The brutes flout the law and deflower the girls, and evidently the girls like it.