Trends in premarital sex in the United States, 1954-2003.
OBJECTIVE
Policy and programmatic efforts promoting sexual abstinence until marriage have increased, but it is unclear whether establishing such behavior as normative is a realistic public health goal. This study examined the proportion of individuals in various cohorts who had had premarital sex (defined as either having had vaginal intercourse before first marrying or ever having had intercourse and never having married) by various ages.


METHODS
Data from four cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth, 1982-2002, and event history analysis techniques, including Kaplan-Meier life-table procedures and Cox proportional-hazards regression models, were used to examine the incidence of premarital sex by gender and historical cohort.


RESULTS
Data from the 2002 survey indicate that by age 20, 77% of respondents had had sex, 75% had had premarital sex, and 12% had married; by age 44, 95% of respondents (94% of women, 96% of men, and 97% of those who had ever had sex) had had premarital sex. Even among those who abstained until at least age 20, 81% had had premarital sex by age 44. Among cohorts of women turning 15 between 1964 and 1993, at least 91% had had premarital sex by age 30. Among those turning 15 between 1954 and 1963, 82% had had premarital sex by age 30, and 88% had done so by age 44.


CONCLUSIONS
Almost all Americans have sex before marrying. These findings argue for education and interventions that provide the skills and information people need to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases once they become sexually active, regardless of marital status.
Finer
Lawrence B
LB
Research Division, The Guttmacher Institute, New York, NY 10005, USA. lfiner@guttmacher.org
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status; D012746:Sexual Abstinence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology