In my never-ending series on ‘Economists who think they can apply their tools to every situation, no matter how ridiculous’, let me introduce you to Robert Michael from the University of Chicago. His paper is called The Nature of Sexual Capital and it literally starts with the following sentence:
“It is surprising that there has been so little economic research on the subject of sexual behaviour.”
No, it isn’t. Sex and economics are two subject areas that rarely form a consensual relationship (pun intended).
But since nobody asked, he developed an economic model that tries to explain how people increase personal utility by engaging in sex. In his model, he considers six potential outcomes of sex that might affect personal utility: (i) physical pleasure, (ii) emotional satisfaction, (iii) intimacy, (iv) peer reputation, (v) fertility, and catching a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Obviously, not all six outcomes are positive, and some outcomes (having children) may be positive or negative depending on the circumstances.
I will not go into the equations he develops to quantify the probability of catching an STI or becoming pregnant and instead go straight to his notion of sexual capital, which he tries to define as analogous to human capital insofar as it describes the set of skills and attributes that allow a person to increase her utility from having sex. And just like with human capital, people invest time and money to increase their sexual capital in an attempt to increase their personal utility from applying it.
The main challenge in practice is that we have a limited amount of sexual capital. Hence, one important consideration is how to allocate it among competing goals. Having more sexual capital leads to a broader range of possible outcomes and better choices made about the practices selected (stop snickering…), but we still have to make choices that reflect our priorities among different products.
Besides having to allocate limited resources to achieve an efficient outcome, sexual capital also allows for better use of existing tools. To use an analogy, a person who is more experienced and trained in using a hammer will have better outcomes than a person who is prone to missing the target with the hammer (I said, stop snickering…).
Finally, having a specific set of skills and tools will – just like with human capital – put you in contact with other people who have similar sets of skills. Sexual capital influences the pool of sexual partners just like human capital influences the pool of friends and colleagues one has.
Putting these three constraints (allocation of sexual capital, efficiency in using the capital, and opportunity set) into his model, he applies it to a 1992 dataset of sexual preferences and activities of Americans that was part of the National Health and Social Life Survey. With the help of some regression analysis, he then comes to a set of conclusions that are worth quoting in full:
“Regarding sexual practices, the frequency of sex per week with a specific partner declines with age, with the duration of that partnership, and is lower as well if the individual had his or her first sexual experience at a later age. The frequency is substantially greater with a spouse or with a cohabiting partner, and greater if the partners expect sexual exclusivity. Several of these relationships reflect the importance of partner-specific sexual capital. Condom use with the partner is less at older ages; whites report less use of condoms while more educated adults report greater usage. Heterosexuals report far greater use of condoms and those characterized as recreationalists do so as well. Use of condoms is far less frequent with a spouse or cohabiting partner and less frequent as well if the partnership in understood to involve sexual exclusivity. Interestingly, couples who were acquainted with each other for a longer time period prior to beginning a sexual relationship use a condom with greater frequency; perhaps this reflects a deeper commitment to the health of the partner. The sexual practice of oral sex declines somewhat with age, and among those who went through puberty at an older age, but it is much more frequent among whites and among the more educated. Those who had experienced inappropriate childhood sex and those ever forced to do something sexual they didn’t want to do engage in more oral sex, while, the ‘recreationalists’ have more oral sex while the ‘reproductionists’ have far less. As for the partner-specific sexual capital measures, oral sex is more common with a spouse or cohabiting partner and in a sexually exclusive relationship and declines with duration of the relationship and is lower among those who were acquainted for a longer while prior to beginning to have sex together.”
Ground-breaking stuff.
'Interestingly, couples who were acquainted with each other for a longer time period prior to beginning a sexual relationship use a condom with greater frequency; perhaps this reflects a deeper commitment to the health of the partner'
Or they stíll don't trust each other...
It seems the US especially collects a lot of data on oral sex. It reminds me of Republican outrage over a supposed oral sex epidemic around the early 2000s (Clinton's fault of course, after all, he was quite a sucker himself).