Source: About.com [the US]

http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa070700a.htm

Geography of Sex

Dateline: 07/07/00

When people are fed and clothed, then they think about sex.
- Confucius

The recently published The Penguin Atlas of Human Sexual Behavior contains a plethora of facts and data about sex and sexuality worldwide. Unfortunately, the data used in the atlas was not often available for each country in the world so the author, Dr. Judith Mackay, was left to map incomplete data which is sometimes from as few as a dozen or so counties. Nonetheless, the book provides a fascinating insight into the cultural geography of sex and reproduction.

The book is 128 pages long, including 45 pages that include maps and an 8-page chart with basic reproductive, population, and marriage data for the countries of the world. The Atlas is filled with graphics and USA Today-style colorful charts and graphs, most of which have data that comes from one individual study from a particular country.

Sometimes the data, maps, and graphics seem a bit sketchy. One example of an non-cited graphic is titled "Breasts Are Getting Bigger" and implies that in 1997, the average breast size in the U.K. was 36B but that it grew to 36C in 1999. A longer time period is provided for "Asia" - the graphic shows that in the 1980s average breast size was 34A and the 1990s it was 34C, not quite as dramatic as the U.K.'s single cup size increase in two years.

I am a bit disappointed in the number of "Internet surveys" utilized for the book. Such data is quite possibly skewed. The data I mention below in this article comes from reputable sources listed in the "references" section of the atlas. On with the facts:

First Encounters

Maps in the atlas provide information about the age of first sexual intercourse worldwide for several dozen countries where data was available.

For women, the countries with the youngest average age of first intercourse are in central Africa and the Czech Republic with an average age of 15. The countries where women's first sexual experience comes at age 20 and older are Egypt, Kazakhstan, Italy, Thailand, Ecuador, and the Philippines. According to the map, the first sexual intercourse comes at 16 in the U.S. and 18 in the U.K.

For men, the earliest average age of first intercourse is 16 in Brazil, Peru, Kenya, Zambia, Iceland, and Portugal but the highest average age is 19 in Italy. A male in the U.K.'s average age of first intercourse is 18. There are far fewer countries with men's data than women's in the atlas (even the U.S. is missing from the map.)

Sexual Intercourse & Contraception

According to the atlas, on any given day, sexual intercourse takes place 120 million times on earth. Thus, with 240 million people having sex daily and a world population of just under 6.1 billion, about 4% of the world's population (1 out of ever 25 people) is having or had sex today.

The country boasting the longest amount time during sexual intercourse is Brazil at 30 minutes. The U.S., Canada, and the U.K. follow with 28, 23, and 21 minutes respectively. The quickest sex in the world takes place in Thailand with 10 minutes and Russia at 12 minutes.

Among sexually active 16-45 year olds, the most active countries are Russia, the U.S.A. and France, where people report having sex more than 130 times a year. Sex is least frequent in Hong Kong at under 50 times a year.

Modern contraception i