Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study

David G. Blanchflower

This paper studies the empirical patterns in money, sex and happiness. Using 1990s data from the General Social Surveys of the United States, the paper shows that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations. We calculate that the median American has sexual intercourse 2-3 times a month. In our data, close to half of American women over the age of 40 report that they did not have sex in the previous year; the figure for men is 20%. Among Americans under 40 years of age, approximately 80% of women and 70% of men had no more than one sexual partner in the previous year. Sex appears to have stronger effects on the happiness of highly educated people than those with low levels of education. The happinessmaximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is 1. Homosexuality has no statistically significant effect on happiness, but a strong positive effect on the reported amount of sexual activity. Married people have more sex than those who are single, divorced, widowed, or separated. Money buys more sexual partners but not more sex.

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-6-20 18:16:16编辑过]