In a comment at Overcoming Bias, Michael Vassar responded to the claim that in our society on average the wealthy are least promiscuous: “If you have spent time with middle class and wealthy people, even a little time, that claim is obviously false. The wealthy are MUCH more promiscuous in my observation.”
I decided to check the GSS.
| Frequency Distribution | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N |
RINCOME | |||||
| 1 LT $6000 |
2 $6000 – 14999 |
3 $15000 – 24999 |
4 $25000 OR MORE |
ROW TOTAL |
||
| PARTNERS | 0: NO PARTNERS | 16.8 383.4 |
13.9 439.1 |
12.7 444.0 |
9.7 737.1 |
12.1 2,003.6 |
| 1: 1 PARTNER | 65.2 1,482.9 |
69.5 2,189.1 |
73.2 2,565.4 |
79.1 6,000.6 |
74.1 12,237.9 |
|
| 2: 2 PARTNERS | 8.6 195.8 |
7.5 236.5 |
7.3 255.9 |
5.3 402.5 |
6.6 1,090.7 |
|
| 3: 3 PARTNERS | 3.5 80.6 |
4.2 132.9 |
3.2 112.8 |
2.5 188.6 |
3.1 514.9 |
|
| 4: 4 PARTNERS | 2.4 55.4 |
2.0 61.9 |
1.7 58.2 |
1.5 112.3 |
1.7 287.8 |
|
| 5: 5-10 PARTNERS | 2.1 48.6 |
2.2 70.1 |
1.3 46.7 |
1.4 109.6 |
1.7 275.0 |
|
| 6: 11-20 PARTNERS | 1.0 23.1 |
.4 11.5 |
.3 10.8 |
.3 22.1 |
.4 67.6 |
|
| 7: 21-100 PARTNERS | .2 4.0 |
.2 7.5 |
.2 8.0 |
.1 10.0 |
.2 29.5 |
|
| 8: MORE THAN 100 PARTNERS | .1 1.6 |
.1 2.4 |
.0 1.5 |
.0 .5 |
.0 6.0 |
|
| COL TOTAL | 100.0 2,275.5 |
100.0 3,151.0 |
100.0 3,503.4 |
100.0 7,583.2 |
100.0 16,513.2 |
|
| Means | 1.21 | 1.21 | 1.15 | 1.13 | 1.16 | |
| Std Devs | 1.12 | 1.04 | .92 | .85 | .95 | |
| Unweighted N | 2,062 | 2,987 | 3,471 | 7,550 | 16,070 | |
| Frequency Distribution | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N |
RINCOME | ||||||||
| 1 LT $3000 |
2 $3000 – 5999 |
3 $6000 – 9999 |
4 $10000 – 14999 |
5 $15000 – 19999 |
6 $20000 – 24999 |
7 $25000 OR MORE |
ROW TOTAL |
||
| PARTNERS | 0: NO PARTNERS | 18.2 203.5 |
15.5 179.9 |
15.6 199.6 |
12.8 239.4 |
13.8 230.5 |
11.7 213.5 |
9.7 737.1 |
12.1 2,003.6 |
| 1: 1 PARTNER | 63.0 704.0 |
67.3 778.9 |
69.0 884.9 |
69.8 1,304.2 |
71.0 1,186.2 |
75.3 1,379.1 |
79.1 6,000.6 |
74.1 12,237.9 |
|
| 2: 2 PARTNERS | 8.2 91.9 |
9.0 103.9 |
8.0 103.0 |
7.2 133.6 |
8.1 135.6 |
6.6 120.3 |
5.3 402.5 |
6.6 1,090.7 |
|
| 3: 3 PARTNERS | 3.7 41.8 |
3.4 38.8 |
4.2 54.1 |
4.2 78.7 |
3.2 53.7 |
3.2 59.1 |
2.5 188.6 |
3.1 514.9 |
|
| 4: 4 PARTNERS | 3.2 35.7 |
1.7 19.7 |
1.1 14.3 |
2.6 47.6 |
1.5 25.5 |
1.8 32.7 |
1.5 112.3 |
1.7 287.8 |
|
| 5: 5-10 PARTNERS | 1.9 21.7 |
2.3 26.9 |
1.4 17.9 |
2.8 52.2 |
1.6 27.1 |
1.1 19.6 |
1.4 109.6 |
1.7 275.0 |
|
| 6: 11-20 PARTNERS | 1.4 15.8 |
.6 7.3 |
.3 4.2 |
.4 7.3 |
.6 9.4 |
.1 1.4 |
.3 22.1 |
.4 67.6 |
|
| 7: 21-100 PARTNERS | .2 1.9 |
.2 2.1 |
.4 5.3 |
.1 2.2 |
.2 2.6 |
.3 5.5 |
.1 10.0 |
.2 29.5 |
|
| 8: MORE THAN 100 PARTNERS | .1 1.6 |
.0 .0 |
.0 .0 |
.1 2.4 |
.0 .4 |
.1 1.1 |
.0 .5 |
.0 6.0 |
|
| COL TOTAL | 100.0 1,118.0 |
100.0 1,157.5 |
100.0 1,283.4 |
100.0 1,867.7 |
100.0 1,671.1 |
100.0 1,832.3 |
100.0 7,583.2 |
100.0 16,513.2 |
|
| Means | 1.24 | 1.19 | 1.14 | 1.25 | 1.16 | 1.14 | 1.13 | 1.16 | |
| Std Devs | 1.20 | 1.05 | .97 | 1.09 | .96 | .88 | .85 | .95 | |
| Unweighted N | 1,001 | 1,061 | 1,206 | 1,781 | 1,646 | 1,825 | 7,550 | 16,070 | |
I shrunk the number of buckets because the GSS divides it too finely at the low end of the scale*. I wish I could have broken up the last bucket to reveal the really rich. At any rate, promiscuity seems to decrease with income, and Vassar didn’t distinguish between the rich and middle class anyway.
*I often forget how to rename, ranges, so here’s what I used: RINCOME(r: 1-5 “LT $6000″; 6-9 “$6000 – 14999″; 10-11 “$15000 – 24999″; 12 “$25000 OR MORE”). I don’t think I’ve mislabeled the dollar amounts, run it again without the aggregation into buckets if you’d like to check my boundaries. I also restricted the dependent variable with PARTNERS(0-8), since I don’t know how to treat answer 9.
| Summary Statistics | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eta* = | .04 | Gamma = | -.01 | Rao-Scott-P: F(24,3168) = | 8.37 | (p= 0.00) | ||
| R = | -.04 | Tau-b = | .00 | Rao-Scott-LR: F(24,3168) = | 8.10 | (p= 0.00) | ||
| Somers’ d* = | .00 | Tau-c = | .00 | Chisq-P(24) = | 256.99 | |||
| Chisq-LR(24) = | 248.81 | |||||||
| *Row variable treated as the dependent variable. | ||||||||
On second thought, the problem with the income numbers is that inflation has reduced the values of the dollar categories they originally assigned. Breaking things up by YEAR I found that 1990 was the last year that the highest income category was comparable in size to my other buckets. So here are the results with the selection filter YEAR(1988-1990).
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Basically consistent, but I miss the large sample size. It occurs to me that older people might be likely to have higher incomes and fewer partners. I can run more tables with restricted age ranges. I’d prefer that Vassar give age numbers he’d find acceptable, but if he’s not interested I’m open to suggestions from the comments.
UPDATE: Vassar hasn’t responded yet, but I did some thinking about the problems with the income categories. The GSS also has an occupational prestige category. I restricted it to males (SEX(1)) of AGE(18-35) and doubled the precision of the buckets as they moved outward from the center of the prestige distribution as follows PRESTG80(r: 17-24 “10th %ile”; 25-32 “10-30″; 33-47 “30-70″; 48-60 “70-90″; 61-86 “90-100″). There are a lot of prestige categories with few members, so while the percentiles are not exact they are pretty close.
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The pattern looks less obvious but still a trend toward less promiscuity. I see Chip recommends also looking at the oldest cohort (how old?), but I don’t feel like adding up their prestige percentiles tonight.
UPDATE 2: Jason Malloy points out a continuous variable reflectin real income, REALRINC. A scatter-plot with a best-fit line might be preferable, but you’ll have to settle for bar-charts.
UPDATE 3: Aaron requested I use PARTNRS5.
October 19, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Of course, the likely rebuttal is that for some reason, the wealthy are more likely to lie on this particular question. Regardless, I’ll take statistics over anecdotes here.
October 20, 2010 at 5:57 am
It’s not clear from the post what “RINCOME” means. How rich are these people?
October 20, 2010 at 7:52 am
RINCOME : RESPONDENTS INCOME – 38. Did you earn any income from [OCCUPATION DESCRIBED IN Q2] last year? a. If yes: In which of these groups did your earnings from [OCCUPATION IN Q2] for last year fall? That is, before taxes or other deductions. 0 IAP 1 LT $1000 2 $1000 TO 2999 3 $3000 TO 3999 4 $4000 TO 4999 5 $5000 TO 5999 6 $6000 TO 6999 7 $7000 TO 7999 8 $8000 TO 9999 9 $10000 – 14999 10 $15000 – 19999 11 $20000 – 24999 12 $25000 OR MORE 13 REFUSED 98 DK 99 NA
PARTNERS : HOW MANY SEX PARTNERS R HAD IN LAST YEAR – 1541. How many sex partners have you had in the last 12 months? -1 IAP 0 NO PARTNERS 1 1 PARTNER 2 2 PARTNERS 3 3 PARTNERS 4 4 PARTNERS 5 5-10 PARTNERS 6 11-20 PARTNERS 7 21-100 PARTNERS 8 MORE THAN 100 PARTNERS 9 1 OR MORE, DK # 95 SEVERAL 98 DK 99 NA
October 20, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Then RINCOME of $25000+ is not remotely wealthy. The guy who drives a forklift in a warehouse makes that much.
October 20, 2010 at 9:27 am
You’ve got to control for age. I’d run the same plot for the youngest and oldest adult cohorts.
October 20, 2010 at 9:54 am
$25,000 a year is middle class?
October 20, 2010 at 11:50 am
Controlling for age is certainly a wise idea, since income and wealth do tend to be higher amongst older people. Without reference to statistics, I’d guess that people in the age bracket 50- 65 are in their peak earning years, and also have fewer debts than younger people. Also, it is increasingly in this age bracket that people tend to come into inheritances from parents, who are typically between 20-30 years older than they.
All this being said, there are many recently who have observed that conventional monogamous marriage is becoming more and more an upper- and upper-middle class phenomenon, while cohabitation without marriage is common amongst the lower class and is becoming ever more frequent amongst working- and middle-class households.
Bastardy is another good measure of promiscuity – it being after all a well-known consequence of it – and is overwhelmingly a lower-class phenomenon.
October 20, 2010 at 12:33 pm
I think TGGP is right to want to get more specific with income brackets. As a promiscuous (though not wealthy) hyper-educated person with frequent dealings with other demographics in my professional life, I would be surprised if there wasn’t a barbell distribution – more promiscuity among the bottom-level poor and uneducated, and more promiscuity among the super-elite. (Sometimes the latter species of promiscuity is healthy and consensual, sometimes it’s more the Tiger Woods/Genghis Khan model, but it no doubt exists.) I bet this is what Michael Vassar is talking about, though I am not surprised it’s hard to find using an instrument with the sensitivity of the GSS. (There is also little incentive to report honestly and some incentive to lie.)
October 23, 2010 at 6:01 am
I’d divide the financial elite into about three categories:
(1) the lucky and the inherited -probably relatively low IQ and conscientiousness, probably fucking a lot, like a prole with a bequest might start doing.
(2)the very high IQ, risk-phillic: probably fucks a lot more than dumber, poorer, more risk adverse folks who have less money than them.
(3) the fairly high IQ, risk-phobic, risk-adverse, but super-high conscientiousness. This group gets fairly rich on a combination of intelligence and work ethic, probably approaches sexual contact with a strong goal of avoiding chronic STD’s.
#3′s may be relatively invisible to #2′s, so people that may more resemble #2′s like Michael Vassar and SisterY so a large and undernoticed population of #2′s may account for statistics that the wealthy are less promiscuous.
October 23, 2010 at 6:02 am
“so a large and undernoticed population of #2′s may account for”
should read
“so a large and undernoticed population of #3′s may account for”
October 23, 2010 at 10:11 pm
You apparently have little acquaintance with those who have inherited wealth. Most in my experience have above-average intelligence (they come, after all, from good stock) and are both economically and socially conservative. Holding on to a fortune requires as much or more skill as making one. The profile of the old-money people with whom I’m acquainted is described in your category #3. Paris Hilton is very much an exception to the rule.
October 24, 2010 at 4:58 am
Michael,
There’s no way you could be familiar with my disorganized body of writing on the internet, but I’m in the same camp of holding on to wealth over time is in the same general bracket of skill as acquiring wealth over time, since life resembles a global game of poker.
HOWEVER, it takes time for wealth to be redistributed away from the inherited. Smart redistributors and dumb inheritees also have to come the legal defenses created by supersmart benefactors. So there’s a gradient that protects dumb inheritees. Finally regression to the mean indicates that inheritees of each subsequent generation will have significantly less positively deviant intelligence (and conscientiousness and motivation), as a cohort than the initial supertalented benefactor who accumulated the wealth.
Thus, as a class, I suspect inheritees to be dumber, less conscientious, and less motivated than the “self-made” wealthy.
October 24, 2010 at 4:59 am
“Smart redistributors and dumb inheritees also have to come the legal defenses created by supersmart benefactors.”
should read
“Smart redistributors and dumb inheritees also have to overcome the legal defenses created by supersmart benefactors.”
October 26, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Reversion to the mean might occur if the founders of fortunes, and their successors, did not pay attention to their choice of mates. Intelligence is largely an hereditary trait. The tendency is for bright, successful people to marry other bright, successful people, and to have – no surprise – bright, successful children. If anything, this tendency has been increasingly prevalent.
See, for example, Charles Murray’s article in last Sunday’s (Oct. 24th) Washington Post. While I don’t agree with all he says, there is much in it of interest. He writes:”The New Elite marry each other, combining their large incomes and genius genes, and then produce offspring who get the benefit of both. We are watching the maturation of the cognitive stratification that Richard J. Herrnstein and I described in “The Bell Curve” back in 1994. … The more efficiently a society identifies the most able young people of both sexes, sends them to the best colleges, unleashes them into an economy that is tailor-made for people with their abilities and lets proximity take its course, the sooner a New Elite – the “cognitive elite” that Herrnstein and I described – becomes a class unto itself…”
The objection I have to Murray’s argument is summarized by the old aphorism, “plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose.” As breathlessly as he writes about the New Elite, it should be evident that such cognitive stratification has been going on for a long time. It is why hereditary aristocracy is so widespread a phenomenon in history. The only thing that is novel about Murray’s New Elite is that the phenomenon is repeating itself amongst people who have been taught to repeat the egalitarianism of the French and Russian revolutions as a well-nigh religious creed, and who cannot honestly come to grips with the fact that inequality is the law of nature, and aristocracy is as inevitable as gravity.
Consequently they are embarrassed and do not cultivate the aristocratic virtues, but rather seek cover under the mask of multiculturalism and political correctness. They have become a nomenklatura rather than a nobility. They fulfill Clemenceau’s claim that the United States is the first nation in history to pass from a condition of barbarism to one of decadence, without an intervening period of civilisation.
October 26, 2010 at 4:46 pm
I’m no genius, but in my understanding if two deviantly smart people marry each other, only a minority of their offspring statistically have intelligence as high as or higher than their parents, because part of the deviantly high IQ of both parents was due simply to the improbable luck of how their parents’ genes combined.
So that the majority of their kids would regress to a lower IQ even if their offspring always married people of equal IQ (in this scenario of picking equal IQ partners who will become equal non-luck skill environmental managers for their developing kids), though I suppose the regression more or less stops after the first generation in this hypothetical.
Thus not every kid of a nobel prize winner wins a nobel prize -it’s a minority of that population, although they’re likelier than offspring of the general population.
General observation causes me to think regression to the mean is real, and the more deviantly smart the parents, the more evident the effect. If a smart couple wants two clone IQ heirs, they’d probably do better to have 6 or more kids than just two, and then pick the two smartest as their favorites.
October 26, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Wrt “regression to the mean” we should — even though it’s more of a mouthful — think of it as regression toward the mean.
The children of very highly intelligent parents probably won’t be as bright as their parents, but they will probably be brighter than average for the general population. It seems to me that a part of Michael’s point is that, if such people intermarry over a series of generations, they in fact create a sub-population with a new mean, which is higher than that of the general population. At that point, assuming that they keep marrying only among themselves or with people of equally high intelligence (which granted, they may not do) they stop regessing toward the mean of the general population.
One last point: aristocracies that wish to survive have never been entirely closed systems. They generally allow for the absorption over time of talented newcomers. “New Blood” as it were, has always had its place.
October 28, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Dr. Horsemeat – thanks for your comment. Exactly so!
We see the effects of cognitive stratification in populations that have high median IQs. The most commonly mentioned is Ashkenazic Jews, but even more relevant to the discussion here is Episcopalians, who reportedly have a slightly higher median IQ than do Ashkenazic Jews.
Unlike Judaism, conversion to which is difficult, and adherence to which (until recently) has been accompanied by significant social disadvantages, the Episcopal Church has always been a denomination favored by the socioeconomic elite, and has attracted many upwardly-mobile converts. It should not, therefore, be surprising that the result has been a population – to some extent self-selected – with a median IQ higher than that of the overall population.
The point that a healthy aristocracy must be open to new blood is obvious in comparing the relative fortunes of the British aristocracy and various Continental ones. Since Britain has an active fons honorum, which continued to grant hereditary titles as recently as the Thatcher ministry (and might resume doing so), the British aristocracy has remained a representative and genuine national elite in a way that the French aristocracy (which has had no fons honorum since the deposition of Louis Napoléon) or the German or Austrian aristocracies (which have had none since the end of World War II) have not.
Moreover, in France, well into the twentieth century, the aristocrats of the ancien régime looked down their noses at those of nineteenth-century creation. This may have satisfied the snobisme of the moment, but led ultimately to social irrelevance. Thus a British earl or marquess is still someone to be reckoned with, while a French comte or marquis may very well not be.
October 23, 2010 at 6:55 am
You would want to use the REALRINC variable which is inflation adjusted, is a continuous variable, and has data for the full sample.
Nevertheless, the GSS will not give you information on the super-wealthy. The full range of GSS incomes is roughly $531 – $389,321 in 2009 dollars.
I’m not going to do a literature review here but I will say that promiscuity goes down with intelligence and conscientiousness, and that super-wealth is strongly associated with these traits. On the other hand, a number of people become super-wealthy through art or athletics (e.g. sports, acting, music), and these people will be much more promiscuous than average.
Old Money (inherited wealth) should also be more promiscuous than New Money (earned wealth).
There is also a difference between wealthy men and wealthy women. Wealthy women seem to be above average in masculinity, while wealthy men seem to be below average in masculinity. So there is suggestive evidence that self-made wealthy women could be more promiscuous than average.
I’ll leave you with mean sex partners of average income men in the GSS compared with men in the wealthiest GSS bracket:
$53,479 (2009 dollars): 14 partners
(N= 9,376)
$289,615+ (2009): 10 partners
(N=110)
October 23, 2010 at 10:27 am
> I’ll leave you with mean sex partners of average income
Please, no, just leave me with nice sweet ones – and a little affluent if possible.
October 26, 2010 at 11:25 am
Also, no effort is made here to distinguish between conscientious promiscuity (polyamory, open relationships, etc.) and traditional promiscuity (cheating, juggling multiple partners who don’t know about each other, unprotected sex in city park bathrooms).
October 26, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I don’t find these findings even remotely surprising given that cultural differences don’t play into the statistical calculus.
Do lower class Christian whites tend to be less promiscuous than upper class ones? How about differences between upper and lower class blacks? Asians? Hispanics?
I’m inclined to believe, if extant data was that precise, the results would seem more stereotypically satisfying.
October 26, 2010 at 7:52 pm
I discussed regression to the mean earlier here.
manormensch, the GSS provides a RACE variable. I believe religion is encoded in RELIG. You are welcome to break it down by such factors.
Sister Y, my guess is that the traditional group of promiscuous folks greatly outnumber the other kind. Though it’s possible that fidelity is not really expected from many of their partners.
October 27, 2010 at 4:35 pm
The best estimate of the mean that your kids will regress towards is the average IQ of their four grandparents of their 8 great-grandparents. Here’s a question I have: of, say, the people in the US with 130 or higher IQ, what fraction of them are from ‘smart families’ and what fraction are freak ‘one-offs’ from families with a much lower mean?
November 1, 2010 at 6:53 pm
I wonder if this might be at play in this discussion:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201010/why-intelligent-people-use-more-drugs
November 1, 2010 at 11:52 pm
Reminds me of this:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/06/drugs-are-about-sex.html
I’ll look into the GSS on intelligence & drugs later. Razib posted findings earlier that they are more likely to drink.
November 2, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Maybe intelligent people are more bored.
Drugs and sex are more effective than television at relieving cognitive surplus.
November 2, 2010 at 7:43 pm
The GSS has two questions on boredom. I’ll report back on both of them.
November 2, 2010 at 7:30 pm
[...] referenced such an association it in the comments. Here’s what the GSS [...]
November 3, 2010 at 9:05 pm
[...] Y suggested that smart people may use drugs & have sex because they are bored more often. The GSS has two [...]
December 22, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Given that “Partners in the last year” is so concentrated around 1, I’m not sure it’s a great proxy for what Robin means by “promiscuity”. What’s the situation for PARTNRS5, for the the last five years?
December 26, 2010 at 8:55 pm
I have now updated the post.