I did this breakdown in an RP-centric sub, it was well-received before it was removed. So I figured I'd copy/paste it here. This is in response to the recent CNN article posted about the amount of sex Americans have had in the past year, using data from the 2021 general social survey.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/health/valentines-day-love-marriage-relationships-wellness/index.html

I saw someone question the gender and age breakdown, and since the people who conducted the survey nor the people who reported the data never did, I decided to look into it myself (side note I work as DBA and am halfway done with a master's in data analytics so its not that much effort for me to do). So here is the analysis of the survey broken down by gender and age group.

I downloaded the data from the GSS website that was used in that survey, used R to convert the .dta file into a .csv file and imported it into an oracle database to query.

https://gss.norc.org/get-the-data/stata

There are three variables that I focused on; sexbirth1, sexfreq, and age

Here are the screenshots of the data reported by the GSS for the definition and numbers of each category:

https://preview.redd.it/mu670mqq55i81.png?width=790&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa2bd8acd0bdf29924f35b5300fbbad190cc4a9c

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https://preview.redd.it/59i0wxzv55i81.png?width=970&format=png&auto=webp&s=8775e98842fd4b8920a325ce267984dd2ed14c4f

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https://preview.redd.it/uefisvfx65i81.png?width=842&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa6ef61c59e6e9d7dbb35abe7ba14490a5f4e096

Below is the code that I wrote to find all of the data:

select 'Total number of men: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 1 union select 'Total number of women: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 2 union select 'Total of people that answered: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexfreq between 0 and 6 union select 'Total of people that had no sex in a year: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexfreq = 0 union select 'Total of men that answered: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 1 and sexfreq between 0 and 6 union select 'Total of men that had no sex in a year: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 1 and sexfreq = 0 union select 'Total of men under 30 that answered: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 1 and sexfreq between 0 and 6 and age < 30 union select 'Total of men under 30 that had no sex in a year: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 1 and sexfreq = 0 and age < 30 union select 'Total of men over 30 that answered: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 1 and sexfreq between 0 and 6 and age > 30 union select 'Total of men over 30 that had no sex in a year: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 1 and sexfreq = 0 and age > 30 union select 'Total of women that answered: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 2 and sexfreq between 0 and 6 union select 'Total of women that had no sex in a year: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 2 and sexfreq = 0 union select 'Total of women under 30 that answered: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 2 and sexfreq between 0 and 6 and age < 30  union select 'Total of women under 30 that had no sex in a year: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 2 and sexfreq = 0 and age < 30 union select 'Total of women over 30 that answered: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 2 and sexfreq between 0 and 6 and age > 30  union select 'Total of women over 30 that had no sex in a year: ' as criteria, count (*) as count from gss_2021 where sexbirth1 = 2 and sexfreq = 0 and age > 30;

Here are the outcomes:

Total number of men: 1730

Total number of women: 2198

Total of people that answered: 2157

Total of people that had no sex in a year: 63

Total of men that answered: 955

Total of men that had no sex in a year: 218

Total of men under 30 that answered: 95

Total of men under 30 that had no sex in a year: 19

Total of men over 30 that answered: 810

Total of men over 30 that had no sex in a year: 188

Total of women that answered: 1192

Total of women that had no sex in a year: 409

Total of women under 30 that answered: 135

Total of women under 30 that had no sex in a year: 27

Total of women over 30 that answered: 990

Total of women over 30 that had no sex in a year: 363

I compared my numbers for total number of men, total number of women, total people answered, and total people who haven't had sex in a year to the results in the pictures posted above, they match up. Some of the extrapolated numbers may not match with the totals though (For instance, the sum men over 30 and under 30 is less than total men. This is because some people didn't specify age and were excluded).

Here is a breakdown of the percentages of each category.

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Percent of people that had no sex in a year: 29.3% (matches study result above)

Percent of men that had no sex in a year: 22.8%

Percent of women that had no sex in a year: 34.3%

Percent of men under 30 that had no sex in a year: 20%

Percent of women under 30 that had no sex in a year: 20%

Percent of men over 30 that had no sex in a year: 23.2%

Percent of women over 30 that had no sex in a year: 36.6%

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One thing to note, the analysts at CNN reported that 26% of Americans haven't had sex in a year, whereas the actual source reports 29%. That's because whoever pulled the data and reported it used a formula to weigh the data, and since I don't know what they did I just left it unweighted so it matches with the original source. Another thing to note is that this data sample is not that large at all considering that there are 2157 results from 300+ million people in the country so it may not be an accurate representation. All in all I think this is interesting since the most commonly held belief is that younger people (men specifically) are having less sex. I plan on doing something like this for body count as well out of curiosity. Lmk what ya'll think.

tl;dr: younger people are reporting having more sex than older people, men are reporting having more sex than women, older women are down bad