Is Australia Really the Most Sexually Promiscuous Country?
How accurate is this “Global Promiscuity Index” put together by NapLab
What’s going on Down Under? Australia came out on top of the recently released “Global Promiscuity Index,” which was covered by the Daily Mail, The New York Post, and some other outlets. This Index is a ranking system put together by NapLab, a mattress company (yes, a mattress company) that scored 45 different countries around the world on six sex-related factors. Brazil finished second in these rankings. Greece third.
And the U.S.?
Well, in this ranking, America wasn’t exactly the top model of promiscuity, landing at the number 15 spot, right below the United Kingdom and Japan. But before you start moving to Australia—or away from Australia depending on your preferences—simply on the basis of this ranking, keep in mind that this Index and ranking were far from a scientifically validated study.
Yeah, when you want to have sex, you may seek a mattress. But when you are looking for well-conducted scientific analyses, a mattress company may not be the first place you’d look. This “Global Promiscuity Index” and these rankings have not been through the standard peer-review process that scientific journal publications and more official rankings go through. Plus, the Index does have a number of clear limitations, which will be discussed shortly. Therefore, take these rankings with a mattress full of salt.
Here are the Top 20 most sexually promiscuous countries as laid out by NapLab:
Australia
Brazil
Greece
Chile
New Zealand
Germany
Italy
Switzerland
Thailand
South Africa
Czechia
Finland
United Kingdom
Japan
United States
Netherlands
Mexico
Denmark
Iceland
Canada
Apparently, this was based on a composite score put together by NapLab that consisted of the following six sex-related factors:
The average age at which people lost their virginity: The younger the age, the higher the score and vice-versa. This factor could contribute up to 100 points to the overall score. In case you are interested, Denmark had the youngest average age at 16.1 years, followed by Sweden at 16.2 and Finland at 16.5. The mean age for the U.S. was 18 years. So if you are in America and can vote, get a Costco card, and buy spray paint, apparently on average you’ve had your first ever sexual intercourse experience already. Where did NapLab get these numbers? They cited 2016 pieces in The Daily Star and the Indy 100—two lay publications that aren’t exactly scientific journals—that, in turn, mentioned Durex's Face of Global Sex report that asked around 29,000 people around the world about their sex lives. Durex, by the way, makes condoms, lube, and various sex toys.
The average number of sexual partners: Similarly here, the greater the number, the higher the score. How a country scores on this factor could also lend up to 100 points to the overall score. This information came from the World Population Review, which listed Turkey as the country with the highest average of sexual partners over a person’s lifetime at 14.5. That’s an average as it is very difficult to have half a sexual partner. Next on this list was Australia with 13.3 partners, followed by New Zealand (13.2), Iceland (13.0), and South Africa (12.5). The U.S. clocked in at 10.7, just in case you are trying to compare your experience with others. But no one compares themselves with others, right?
The STD rate: Just like the first two factors, for this factor, the higher the rate, the higher the score out of 100 points. According to the numbers presented by NapLab, South Africa had the highest STD rate at 32,054 per 100,000 people in the population followed by Brazil at 31,746. The U.S. rate was 19,900. What were the sources of these numbers? NapLab cited something called the Wisevoter website that presumably drew those statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The percentage of the population who find premarital sex between adults to be morally acceptable: This also had a maximum score of 100 points with the larger percentages meaning higher scores. The highest percentage was 94% for France—considerably higher than the 65% for the U.S. Of note, NapLab did not list a percentage for every country. For these numbers, NapLab cited the Pew Research Center’s 2013 Global Attitudes survey that asked 40,117 respondents in 40 countries about eight different topics including premarital sex.
Whether prostitution is legal or partially legal: Legal prostitution meant that this contributed 50 points to the overall score. Although prostitution is considered illegal in the U.S., it is legal in Australia, Greece, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Turkey, Hungary, and Slovakia and partially legal in Brazil, Italy, Chile, Thailand, Czechia, Finland, the U.K., Japan, Mexico, Denmark, Spain, Austria and a number of other countries.
Whether premarital sex is illegal among citizens of the given country: Legal premarital sex meant 25 points for this component of the score. Premarital sex is illegal in only two of the 45 countries: Indonesia and Malaysia.
It’s important to remember that the final score and thus the rankings did depend heavily on not only what factors were selected but also how each of them was weighted. This Index in effect weighed the first four factors equally with less weight on the fifth and sixth factors. It’s not completely clear how and why NapLab devised this particular weighting scheme. Or how they determined the relationship between the data and the score in each of the six factors. Or whether all of this followed a scientific process.
Furthermore, data for this Index did come from varied sources. As you can imagine, information on some of the six factors was more straightforward, easier to obtain, and more accurate than others. It’s relatively straightforward to read the laws to determine whether premarital sex and prostitution are legal in a country. Many countries make the rates of reportable STDs readily available online, such as via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
By contrast, the remaining info is a little more squirrely. For example, you may not readily reveal things such as the age at which you lost your virginity and the number of sexual partners you’ve had to anyone else besides your partner and Google when you search for something like, “Is 298 partners too many?” Therefore, data on such information for each of the 45 countries had to come from surveys of selected samples of people from each country. Such samples may not necessarily be representative of the entire population. For example, searching the Internet for the average number of sexual partners in the U.S. will return a fair amount of variability, ranging from 4.3 for women and 6.3 for men, according to the CDC, to 19 and 26, respectively, based on a survey conducted by Nectar Sleep covered by Sarah Fielding for the Insider.
A further complication is that surprise, surprise, people can lie about their sexual experiences. In the American Pie movie series, the Jessica and Stifler characters spoke of the rule of three, where men might inflate or exaggerate the number of sexual partners whom they have had by three times and women might deflate or divide the number of partners by three as well. Of course, this rule has not been verified by peer-reviewed scientific studies. But it does highlight the fact that people may not be telling the truth and nothing but the truth on surveys.
Ultimately, country trends do not reflect what’s happening with each individual. For example, the average number of sexual partners in the U.S. may have been 10.7 according to the data used for this Index. But that’s approximately 4790 less than the 4800 sexual partners that Gene Simmons has claimed that he has had and potentially more than the number of partners that many people in America have had. A key thing to remember is that averages don’t really reflect the overall distribution of the population. So, just because someone hails from Australia doesn’t mean that you should give that person a nudge-nudge, wink-wink. The rankings don’t mean that everyone Down Under is getting down to the same degree, so to speak.