A Quarter Of Japanese Adults Under 40 Are Virgins, And The Number Is Increasing

Having sex may have jumped the shark, at least for younger adults in Japan. A new, detailed analysis of national fertility data finds that the proportion of adults in the country who have never had vaginal heterosexual intercourse is on the rise.

For women between the ages of 18 and 39, a total of 24.6 percent were virgins in 2015, up from 21.7 percent in 1992. Among men of the same age bracket, the percentage without sexual experience increased from 20 percent to 25.8 percent.

The trend towards less sex was consistent even for the older half of the cohort. 6.2 percent of women and 8.8 percent of men aged 30 to 34 reported no heterosexual experience in a 1987 survey; those figures jumped to 11.9 percent and 12.7 percent, respectively, in 2015. Between the ages of 35 and 39, 4 percent of women and 5.5 percent of men reported no heterosexual experience in 1992; in 2015 the figures increased to 8.9 percent and 9.5 percent.




The data comes from the Japanese National Institute of Population and Social Security Research's National Fertility Survey of Japan, which takes place approximately every five years involving between 11,553 and 17,859 adults aged 18 to 39. The analysis is published in the journal BMC Public Health.

Analysis of the data revealed that men with busier lives and careers were more likely to get busy. Having permanent, full-time employment and living in large cities of over a million people were both associated with men having had intercourse. Men in the lowest income brackets were also 10 to 20 times more likely to be virgins than those that earned the most.

"Although the discussion around cause and effect becomes very complex when considering who becomes sexually experienced and who remains a virgin, we show that heterosexual inexperience is at least partly a socioeconomic issue for men. Simply put, money talks," said Cyrus Ghaznavi, first author of the study.

Japan has an increasing percentage of young adults with no history of heterosexual vaginal intercourse.

Caitlin Devor, The University of Tokyo

The relationship between income and sexual experience is less strong for women, which the researchers speculate could have something to do with married women acting as full-time homemakers without a salary.

The rates of people remaining virgins into their 30s are significantly higher than in the US, UK and Australia, where between one and five percent of thirty somethings report no experience.

"Sexual inactivity or inexperience, whether voluntary or not, should not be exoticized, ridiculed, or necessarily considered a concern for everyone. More research is needed on reasons for sexual inactivity and how mating market dynamics might be evolving due to online dating, shifting expectations in romantic and sexual relationships, and changing values, lifestyles, and labor market trends," said Dr. Peter Ueda, an expert in epidemiology and public health and leader of the research project.

Notably, the survey does not ask any questions about same-sex experience and uses a Japanese word implying vaginal intercourse. When the researchers made estimates that account for people who have had same-sex but no heterosexual intercourse, they estimate that 5 percent of thirtysomethings would still lack any sexual experience.

The survey also doesn't account for people who may have had experience in their past but have since become sexually inactive.

"We'd like to investigate those dynamics in future work," said Ghaznavi.

Source:News Now.