Big Decline in Sexual Activity among Teens

What's up with teenagers? Way back in 1991, the 54 percent majority of teens (defined as students in grades 9 through 12) reported ever having had sexual intercourse, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. By 2019, the figure had dropped to just 38 percent. 

Percent of high school students who have ever had sexual intercourse, 1991 and 2019

	2019	1991	pp change
Total, 9-12	38.4%	54.1%	-15.7
9th grade	19.2	39.0	-19.8
10th grade	33.6	48.2	-14.6
11th grade	46.5	62.4	-15.9
12th grade	56.7	66.7	-10.0

The decline in sexual activity has occurred in every grade. It is more pronounced among males (an 18.2 percentage point drop to 39.2 percent) than among females (a 13.2 percentage point drop to 37.6 percent). Teenagers in every race and Hispanic origin group are far less sexually active now than in the past. 

Source: Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2020

Attitudes toward Same-Sex Relationships

In the past decade, younger adults have become increasingly open-minded about same-sex relationships, according to a National Center for Health Statistics report. Same-sex relationships are not only okay with younger generations, but increasingly so as Millennials replace Gen Xers in the under-45 age group.

Among women under age 45, the percentage who think sexual relations between two adults of the same sex are all right climbed from 42 to 60 percent between 2002 and 2011-13. Their male counterparts (who were not surveyed in 2002) also are becoming more open minded. In 2011-13, 49 percent agreed that same-sex relations are all right, up from 40 percent in 2006-10. Even in the under-45 age group, however, there's an age gradient in the percentage who agree that same-sex relations between two adults of the same sex are all right...

Women who agree
Aged 15 to 24: 65%
Aged 25 to 34: 62%
Aged 35 to 44: 54%

Men who agree
Aged 15 to 24: 52%
Aged 25 to 34: 48%
Aged 35 to 44: 46%

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, National Survey of Family Growth, Trends in Attitudes about Marriage, Childbearing, and Sexual Behavior: United States, 2002, 2006-2010, and 2011-2013

Straight or Gay? New Data on Sexual Orientation from the National Survey of Family Growth

It's not easy to collect data on sexual orientation, sexual attraction, or sexual experience. Many Americans are understandably hesitant to reveal details about their personal lives to government interviewers. But ask respondents to put on headphones, listen to a series of questions, and enter answers directly into a laptop computer (a method knows as "audio computer-assisted self-interviewing," or ACASI) and data begin to emerge. The National Survey of Family Growth used ACASI when it surveyed the nation's 18-to-44-year-olds about their sexuality. Here are the results...

• Sexual attraction: 4% of men and 6% of women say they are attracted equally to both sexes, mostly or only to the same sex, or refused to answer.
• Sexual orientation: 5% of men and 8% of women identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or refuse to answer.
• Same-sex sexual contact: 6% of men and 17% of women say they have had same-sex sexual contact.

Why are women so much more likely than men to report same-sex sexual contact? Most likely because men and women are asked different questions. Women are asked whether they have ever given or received oral sex from another female. If they answer no, then they are asked whether they have ever had any sexual experience of any kind with another female, boosting the figure to 17 percent. Men are asked whether they have ever given or received oral or anal sex from another male. They are not asked the additional question about sexual experience of any kind. Thus, the smaller 6 percent.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Sexual Behavior, Sexual Attraction, and Sexual Orientation Among Adults Aged 18-44 in the United States: Data from the 2011-2013 National Survey of Family Growth

Decline in Teen Sexual Activity

Today's teenagers are not as sexually active as teens were a decade or two ago. That explains, in part, why the birth rate of 15-to-19-year-olds fell 57 percent between 1991 (the peak year) and 2013. Among never-married females aged 15 to 19, the percentage who have ever had sexual intercourse fell from 51 percent in 1988 to 44 percent in 2011-13. Among their male counterparts, the figure fell from 60 to 47 percent.

Another reason for the decline in the teen birth rate is the increased use of emergency contraception. Twenty-two percent of sexually active 15-to-19-year-old females in 2011-13 had ever used emergency contraception, up from only 8 percent who had ever used it in 2002.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use, and Childbearing of Teenagers Aged 15-19 in the United States

Estimating the Size of the LGBT Population

"Do you consider yourself to be heterosexual?"

If you ask that question directly on a survey, you get one answer. If you ask it indirectly in a way that veils an individual's response to the specific question, you get another answer. This is the experiment described in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. Using the veiled survey method, in which respondents simply note the number of statements that apply to them (one of them being the statement about heterosexuality), the researchers found much greater LGBT identity than with the direct approach. "The veiled method increased self-reports of non-heterosexual identity by 65%," the authors report.

Because their sample was not representative of Americans as a whole, the researchers did not attempt to ascertain the LGBT share of the population. Instead, the study sought to show how survey methodology affects self-reports of LGBT identity. Interestingly, the veiled methodology also revealed greater anti-gay sentiment than is found in surveys that ask about anti-gay feelings directly. "Our finding that there is stigma attached to reporting anti-gay sentiments is perhaps even more surprising," conclude the authors.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, The Size of the LGBT Population and the Magnitude of Anti-gay Sentiment Are Substantially Underestimated, NBER Working Paper 19508 ($5)