I think explored this previously, but I don’t remember which post it was.
NY did a piece a while back on how much of BMI was misleading.
For men:
- 22% of men are normal or underweight
- 12% of men are “healthy obese”
- 6% of men are “skinny fat”
- 60% of men are overweight or obese
For women,
- 24% of women are normal weight or underweight
- 3% of women are “healthy obese”
- 15% of women are “skinny fat”
- 58% are overweight or obese
Unfortunately, this is for the total population and not the 18-30 demographic that we are seeking to discuss.
Given the previous post on sexlessness, we have a couple charts and some data.
The obesity by age group by cohort in 2012 is:
- 18-23: 14.4%
- 24-27: 19.9%
- 28-31: 23.6%
We probably will have expected this to rise maybe slightly since there is the overall trend of inflation toward 2018 and 2019. This also does not include all of the men and women that are overweight. The overweight range typically is in the 20-33% range, as age increases.
Now, we also have some data from the underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obesity analysis on marriage.
In summary, a general estimation if you’re obese you’re likely to have approximately a 30-50% less likely chance to marry, and if you’re overweight or underweight you likely have approximately a 10-30% less likely chance to marry. If there was 10 normal weight people, then approximately about 6 obese people, 8 underweight, and 8 overweight people would marry.
Although marriage is not necessarily a decent predictor of sex, it gives us a general estimation of sex since most people who are married want to have sex.
In the 18-30 age range for men, based on a general estimation it’s likely that about:
- 20% are obese
- 20% are overweight
- 50% are normal weight
- 10% underweight (we’ll go with 10% just for estimation)
If we apply the “marriage criteria” to this general population distribution, we can get a rough estimate to how much of each of these populations are having sex.
Since 28% of men are not having sex, that means 72% in the past year are. The ratio is approximately 40% less for obese, and 20% less for underweight or overweight than normal weight. This yields approximately these relevant figures:
- ~42 out of 50 normal weight men are having sex (42/50 = 84%)
- ~10 out of 20 obese men are having sex (84%*.6=50.4%)
- ~13 out of 20 overweight men are having sex (84%*.8=67.2%)
- ~7 out of 10 underweight men are having sex (4%*.8=67.2%)
One would assume that most of the “overweight or obese” men having sex are going to be the ones that are “healthy obese” or have significant amounts of musculature on their frame. Since only 12% of men are healthy obese (and likely a higher percentage in the younger population than the older), we can likely assume that the actual figure of healthy obese men in 18-30 population is probably in the range of 13-17% of the population. This means that of the actual 23 overweight and obese men in the 18-30 population, the ones that are overweight or obese are not having sex while the healthy obese ones are. We can also assume that the skinny fat ones aren’t having sex while the more normal underweight ones are.
What is also surprising to me is that the majority of normal and underweight men are still having sex.
Also, going back to the IFStudies on involuntary vs voluntary celibacy:
About 8% of never-married young men living with their parents are involuntarily sexless, and another 7% are voluntarily so. Among men not living with their parents, it’s just 4% involuntarily sexless, and 2% voluntarily so.
Looking at sex in the last year instead of virginity, never married young men without their parents are about 17% sexless, versus nearly 30% among those who live with parents. Even when these variables are combined together, more education is associated with more sexlessness among both men who live with their parents and men who do not, and living with parents is associated with more sexlessness across all educational levels.
Also, 20/50-60 rule or so is more or less correct:
It turns out, the answer is no. And of course, it isn’t! Imagine how much sex those 20% of men would have to be having! A substantial share would need to be doing two-a-days on a regular basis to maintain that kind of share. In reality, according to the GSS, the top 20% of the most sexually active never-married young men have about 50-60% of the sex. It’s about the same for women, and these shares are basically stable over time. Measuring the number of partners instead of sexual frequency, the top 20% most promiscuous men account for about 60% of male sexual partnerings, and the trend is, again, quite stable over time.
In general, summing up all of the available data, it appears that approximately:
- Top 20% is having 50-60% of sex or about 3:1 or 2.5:1 ratio
- Middle 52% is having 40-50% of sex or about 1:1 ratio
- ~15% are involuntarily celibate
- ~13% are voluntarily celibate
Graphically, it looks like this:
- Male 8-10s are having sex with all of the female 6-10s.
- Top 20% of sexually active females (interspersed in female 6-9s most likely) are having sex with the male 8-10s.
- Male 4-7s are having sex with female 4-7s in about 1:1 ratio.
- Male and female 1-3s are half voluntarily celibate and half involuntarily celibate.
That concludes the data analysis. Make of it what you will.
