Why don’t people have more sex?
Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution takes on a tricky reader question:
To put things short, there is an inexplicable shortage of sex. Given that studies show that women and men enjoy it more than most other activities (on average, not on the margin I’ll grant), and given its intrinsically low cost, it appears that even a crude approximation of a utility maximizing person would probably spend much more time having sex than most do. Do you know of any economic discussion of this?
He goes on to give 12 possible answers (and don’t miss his wife’s take on the question!)
My guess is some mixture of 1 (presumably only for single people; it could also apply to non-monogamous couples, (and other tuples, don’t forget polyamory)), a little bit of 2 (there is a pretty big cliff there, but not big enough to explain everything), 5, 7, and 11.
UPDATE: I thought about it a little more and it seems that you can get very different answers to this question depending on whether the average person is seeking to maximize frequency of sex or total time spent having sex. Those could lead to different results. Michael Vassar (the guy who asked the original question) asked why people don’t spend more time having sex. Having sex for longer periods of time takes more stamina and is more physically exhausting, and therefore requires more rest between sex acts. But a series of quickies adding up to the same amount of time may not be as desireable, again, see 7.
May 10th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
I put up two posts in response to this yesterday at voluntaryXchange - “Sex and Fair Trade” and “Sexual Frequency“. Check ‘em out!
December 27th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Americans finally realize the try-before-you-buy works just as well with sex as it does with commodities. Rather than marrying and then shacking up with hot sex coming after the nuptuals, Americans are increasingly putting out before putting on the wedding rings.Women are just as likely as men to get it on before matrimony.
I think this is just the sign of the times. I mean, we like to test things, try them out, before making a purchase. Why should sex and marriage be any different? The stigma associated with pre-marital sex is dead. Long live free love!