Cross-National Variation in Attitudes to Premarital Sex: Economic Development,Disease Risk,and Marriage Strength

Abstract

Sexual behavior responds adaptively to local costs and benefits. It was thus predicted that acceptance of premarital sex would increase with economic development (gross domestic product [GDP]), female labor participation, and births outside wedlock but would decline with marriage strength (marriage rate minus divorce rate), HIV/AIDS incidence, infectious disease risk, and religiosity. Pew Research data on attitudes to premarital sex in 40 countries supported these predictions in correlational analysis (exception HIV/AIDS). Regression analyses found significant effects of GDP, marriage strength, religiosity, and births outside wedlock while women at work was marginally significant (with 82 % of the variance explained). Acceptance of premarital sex increases adaptively with economic development, and declining marriage strength and religiosity, but is not consistently affected by disease risks. Differences in cross-national predictors of premarital sex and casual sex are discussed.

Keywords

economic development disease risk marriage strength premarital sex

Sexual behavior responds adaptively to varied social circumstances (Barber, 2007; Schmitt, 2005). This means that sexual activity is constrained by locally varying costs and benefits to the individual (Barber, 2015). It was hypothesized that national differences in acceptance of premarital sex would also reflect locally varying conditions. For instance, one would predict that approval of premarital sex would be lower in countries where this might pose a greater risk of contracting infectious disease, or prevented young people from marrying. Conversely, in societies where more women work for pay and delay marriage as they acquire an education and get established in occupations, premarital sex would be both more common, and more tolerated. This article investigated whether such variation in social conditions could account for attitudes to premarital sex in 40 countries (Pew Research Center, 2014b) with a focus on the impacts of economic development, the strength of marriage, disease risks, and their correlates.

Data on premarital sex may have quality issues given that sexual behavior is generally conducted in private and data are retrospective self-reports that suffer from subjective interpretations about what having sex means and often ignore homosexual behavior (Sanders & Reinisch, 1999). Moreover, available country-level data are derived from numerous sources using varied methodologies (Wellings et al., 2006). Research on attitudes to premarital sex may thus be useful in understanding societal differences in sexuality (Widmer, Treas, & Newcomb, 1998), although attitudes vary in how strongly they predict behavior (Glasman & Albarracin, 2006). Even so, sexual behavior of male and female college students is consistent with their sexual attitudes (Luquis, Brelsford, & Rojas-Guyler, 2012), and adolescents’ use of sexually explicit Internet material is related to their endorsement of unrestricted sexual attitudes (Doonwaard, Bickham, Rich, ter Bogt, & van den Eijnden, 2015). Moreover, changes in sexual attitudes over time mirror changes in sexual behavior (Wells & Twenge, 2005). Tolerance of premarital sex is also correlated with behavior within a country (Ku et al., 1998).

Premarital Sex and Economic Development

One striking empirical finding is that premarital sexuality (narrowly defined as sexual intercourse between young single heterosexual people) rises with economic development (Caplow, Hicks, & Wattenberg, 2001; Finer, 2007; Wellings et al., 2006). This phenomenon is complex and may reflect various different correlates of development from improved health, and declining economic gender specialization (including increased female participation in paid employment), to declining religiosity (Zuckerman, 2007).

In some developing societies, most brides are reported to be virgins on their wedding day. Indeed, women almost never have sex before marriage in some societies, according to surveys, as was true of European Americans in 1900, just 6% of whom reported sexual intercourse by age 19 years (rising to 74 % in 1991; Caplow et al., 2001), or women in Beijing in 1989, just 15% of whom had intercourse before marriage (Larson, 2012). This is in sharp contrast to the developed world, where women often become sexually active a decade before getting married, rendering wedding day virginity unusual for either gender (Caplow et al., 2001; Finer, 2007; Gesselman, Webster, & Garcia, 2016; Goldin, 1995). Schmitt (2005) found that female interest in casual sex (sociosexuality; Simpson & Gangestad, 1991) was positively correlated with gross domestic product (GDP, but men’s sociosexuality was not) so women in developed countries might plausibly be more open to premarital sexuality than their counterparts in less developed, or more agricultural, nations, at least if nations vary in general sexual restrictiveness.

The extended period between sexual maturity and first marriage in developed countries is one plausible reason why premarital sex is becoming more common. Another reason is increased use of contraceptives that reduce the risk of unwanted pregnancy. Moreover, changes in the characteristics of modern marriages may increase premarital sexuality. The fact that more women join the workforce and are more economically independent means that there is less of an economic motive for marriage (Goldin, 1995). With marriage weakening in this way, women are likely less concerned with preserving their sexual reputation so as to remain marriageable. Indeed, virginity may reduce a person’s desirability for a romantic relationship (whether male or female, Gesselman et al., 2016). In more sexually restrictive societies (which are mostly agricultural ones), men select chaste women as brides as a means of increasing their confidence of paternity in respect to children of the marriage (Essizoglu, Yasan, Yildirim, Gurgen, & Ozkan, 2011; Symons, 1979).

Premarital Sex and the Strength of Marriage

There is a rich network of connections between marriage markets and premarital sex where the marriage market refers to the supply and demand of single marriageable men compared to single women (Barber, 2008a). This phenomenon may be interpreted in a broad cross-species evolutionary framework according to which the sex that is in greater demand as a mate sets the rules of engagement. If there is a scarcity of males, they have easier sexual access to females. On the contrary, if there is a scarcity of females, males may provide more investment in offspring, an extreme example of which is provided by the jacana, a sex-role-reversed bird where males take care of the young and larger females defend territories (Emlen, Wrege, & Webster, 1998).

Generally speaking, in societies where women encounter favorable marriage markets—having more marriageable single men than single women—they delay sexual intercourse until after marriage (Barber, 2001, 2002, 2007; Guttentag & Secord, 1983). Conversely, where there is a severe scarcity of marriageable men, young women typically initiate sexual behavior before marriage and sexual behavior is less restricted in the entire society. Of course, scarcity is defined not just by the number of potential mates but also by their quality given that women often rule out men of lower socioeconomic status than themselves (Guttentag & Secord, 1983).

A similar result is produced in societies where women delay marriage to develop careers (Goldin, 1995). Given that there is a large pool of sexually active women in either case, men do not need to marry to lead an active sex life (Guttentag & Secord, 1983). Single parenthood increases in societies having a scarcity of males, suggesting reduced paternal investment (Barber, 2003). One would predict that premarital sexuality would also increase in countries where women encounter a weak marriage market, where marriage rates are low, and where divorce rates are high. Apart from economic development and the marriage market, early sexuality might be constrained by associated health risks.

Premarital Sex and Disease Risk

Earlier sexual activity increases the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS (Gesselman et al., 2016; Stockl, Kaira, Jacobi, & Watts, 2012). Originally a disease contracted mainly by intravenous drug users and homosexuals, HIV/AIDS is more often spread by heterosexual interactions (Brancato et al., 1997; De Cock, Jaffe, & Curran, 2012). Given the severe risks from infection, one would predict that premarital sex would be reduced in countries where there is a high rate of HIV/AIDS infection, and where interest in casual sex declines (Barber, 2008a). Of course, premarital sex is distinct from casual sex and may occur in the context of an emotionally committed relationship.

A person who is sexually active before marriage would be at greater risk of contracting infectious diseases (other than sexually transmitted ones) through physical contact. It was thus predicted that in countries where the risk of infectious diseases is high, inhabitants would avoid premarital sex and have more negative attitudes toward it (Barber, 2008a, 2008b; Low, 1990).

Specific Predictions

The following specific predictions were tested in relation to attitudes to premarital sex:

Prediction 1: Acceptance of premarital sex will increase with economic development (Lottes & Alkula, 2011). (Strictly speaking, rejection of premarital sex was predicted to decline with development but the double negative was avoided to improve readability.)

Prediction 2: Acceptance of premarital sex will decline with the incidence of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases in a country given that intimate contact increases the risk of acquiring diseases. This prediction follows evidence that attitudes to casual sex are more negative if disease risks are higher (Barber, 2008a).

Prediction 3: Premarital sex will be less acceptable in societies where marriage is stronger (as indicated by high marriage rates combined with low divorce rates that reduce the proportion of women who are sexually active outside marriage). Where women’s marriage prospects are good, they compete over desirable spouses by advertising sexual restraint (Cashdan, 1993).

Prediction 4: Acceptance of premarital sex will increase with the proportion of births outside wedlock, because there is a more permissive attitude to nonmarital sexuality (Barber, 2008a).

Prediction 5: Acceptance of premarital sex will increase with female labor participation because women would be less dependent on male earnings for child support and thus less interested in marriage and advertisement of sexual restraint.

Prediction 6: Acceptance of premarital sex will decline as religiosity rises given that more religious countries reject sex outside marriage (Adamczyk & Hayes, 2012).

Method

Samples of Countries

The sample of 40 countries (see the Appendix) were those for which Pew Research Center (2014b) reported data on attitudes to premarital sex, and this data set was preferred to the behavioral self-report data of Wellings et al. (2006) that did not have a large enough sample size on relevant variables to permit meaningful cross-national analysis. The mean GDP producer price parity was US$15,063, (.05 confidence interval [US$11,464, US$19,791]) compared with US$16,100 for the world average (Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], 2015), indicating that countries in which Pew collected data were representative of the world population, so far as economic development was concerned. Samples were nationally representative polls of adults over 18 years conducted by phone or face-to-face. Surveys were conducted in 2014 either by Random Digit Dial of a probability sample of landline and cell phone households or by face-to-face interviews using multistage cluster sampling (see Pew Research Center, 2014a, for details of the specific methodology used in each country). The smallest sample size was 700 and margins of error ranged from approximately 3% to 5%.

Dependent Variable (DV)

The DV was the percent of respondents who said that premarital sex between unmarried adults is morally unacceptable (Pew Research Center, 2014b). It was natural-log transformed to improve linearity in the data (i.e., correct for heteroscedasticity). Respondents selected from three options: “morally acceptable, morally unacceptable, or not a moral issue.” I analyzed the percentage picking “morally unacceptable”—a continuous variable. Self-reported sex in the previous 4 weeks for single women aged 15 to 24 years was negatively correlated with the DV, r(11) = −.92, p < .001 (Wellings et al., 2006), supporting its validity despite the small number of cases and heterogeneity of sources. Single women were used in this test because data were available for more countries than for men. Disapproval of premarital sex was not significantly correlated with sociosexuality (or interest in sex purely for pleasure, Schmitt, 2005), r(20) = −.14, p > .10, suggesting that attitudes to premarital sex are very different from tolerance of casual sex. It should be noted, however, that this correlation was likely weakened by small sample size and attenuated range because there is little data on sociosexuality in countries that are the most disapproving of premarital sex.

Independent Variables

The adult prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS was used as one measure of the health risk of uncommitted sexual interactions (CIA, 2015). Data were the most current available and were natural-log transformed to improve linearity. The overall risk of major infectious disease was assessed by an ordinal measure according to which the risk varied between very high, high, intermediate, and low, coded 4, 3, 2, 1, respectively (CIA, 2015). This coding was based on a compilation of vector-borne diseases (e.g., malaria, trypanosomiasis), water contact diseases (e.g., schistosomiasis, leptospirosis), animal contact diseases (e.g., H5N1 avian influenza) and food- or waterborne diseases (e.g., diarrhea, typhoid). Although many of these diseases are not spread by direct human contact, it was assumed that sexual relations would pose a greater risk of nonsexual diseases in countries having a generally high load of infectious diseases.

Births outside wedlock was the proportion of births to unmarried women in a country (see OECD, 2017, for the most recent year available that ranged from 2006 to 2014 based on United Nations data). The strength of marriage was measured as the crude marriage rate minus the crude divorce rate (United Nations, 2013). It was assumed that both low marriage rates and high divorce rates—that increase the number of reproductive-age women who are single—would increase the likelihood of women being sexually active outside marriage, including before marriage. Religiosity was the percentage of people in a country who saw religion as important in their daily lives (Gallup, 2010).

Women at work was the percentage of women over 15 years who worked for pay (World Bank, 2015). Economic development was measured as GDP corrected for PPP (US$, CIA, 2015). GDP was natural-log transformed to improve linearity of the data. The Gini coefficient of income inequality (CIA, 2015) was included as a control variable given that the quality of life is determined not just by national wealth but also by its distribution (with a high Gini corresponding to very unequal distribution of income).

Statistical Design

Following preliminary correlational analysis, data were analyzed using ordinary least squares multiple regressions in two steps. First, each predictor was examined with GDP statistically controlled to determine whether it had an effect independent of economic development. Second, all of the variables were entered simultaneously by the method of forced entry. Variance inflation indexes were calculated for each of the predictors, based on multiple rs with the other predictors, to check for possible multicollinearity bias. The square root of the variance inflation index was less than 2.00 in each case, indicating that multicollinearity was not a problem (Fox, 1991). Natural-log transformation was used where this improved linearity in the relationship between DVs and independent variables.

Results

Close to half of respondents found premarital sex unacceptable (M = 48.95 % ± 31.61 SD). Table 1 presents correlations (and r²s) among the DV and each of the independent variables along with the standardized coefficients with GDP partialed out. From the first column, it can be seen that all but one of the correlations (HIV/AIDS) were significant and in the predicted direction. The second column shows that half of the predictors had significant independent effects with economic development (GDP) statistically controlled. One conspicuous exception was major infectious diseases whose effect was entirely attributable to development. Major infectious diseases was excluded from the subsequent regression analysis because the variable had a very strong negative correlation with GDP, r(38) = −.80, p < .001. HIV/AIDS did not reach significance but it was marginal (.10 > p > .05) and was included in the regression analysis. The Gini coefficient control variable was positively correlated with ln GDP, r(38) = .41, p < .01.

Table 1.

Correlations Between Rejection of Premarital Sex and Independent Variables.

Predictor	r	r ²	Standardized regression coefficient with GDP controlled
Major infectious diseases	.57***	.32	.06
Births outside wedlock (%)	−.32*	.10	.21
Ln HIV/AIDS (%)	.16	.03	.22
Women at work (%)	−.39**	.15	.31**
Marriage strength	.63***	.40	.47***
Gallup religiosity	.73***	.53	.43***
Ln GDP PPP (US$)	−.72***	.52	—

Note. GDP = gross domestic product; PPP = producer price parity.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, all tests two-tailed.

Table 2 shows correlations among the predictor variables in the regression analyses along with descriptive statistics of the variables. From the table, it can be seen that ln GDP had a strong negative correlation with religiosity, r(38) = −.74, p < .001.

Table 2.

Correlations Among Predictor Variables in the Regression Analysis Along With Descriptive Statistics.

	Gini	Women at work	Births out of wedlock	Marriage strength	GDP	Religiosity
Gini	—
Women at work %	.14	—
Ln births out of wedlock %	.18	.13	—
Marriage strength	.14	−.42**	−.23	—
Ln GDP PPP	−.32*	.00	−.06	−.25	—
Gallup religiosity %	.36*	−.23	.12	.35*	−.74***	—
M	39.60	47.76	3.02	3.97	9.62	73.72
±SD	7.66	14.42	1.14	1.64	0.88	21.89
Range	27.0-63.1	15-76	1-73	1.4-9.1	1,800-54,800	24-99

Note. GDP = gross domestic product; PPP = producer price parity.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, all tests two-tailed.

Results of the regression analysis are shown in Table 3. Variance inflation factors were all well below the 2.00 cutoff indicating that multicollinearity was not a problem in the analysis.

Table 3.

Regression Analysis of Ln Percent Respondents Finding Premarital Sex Unacceptable (Standardized Regression Coefficients in Parentheses).

Predictor	VIF	B	SE B	t
Gini coefficient of income inequality	1.21	0.022 (.19)	0.0084	2.62*
Women at work	1.26	−0.0076 (.12)	0.0044	1.73
Ln Births out of wedlock	1.07	−0.12 (.16)	0.056	2.14*
Marriage strength	1.28	0.17 (.32)	0.039	4.36***
Ln GDP PPP	1.69	−0.41 (.41)	0.072	5.69***
Gallup religiosity	1.49	0.0080 (.20)	0.0029	2.95**
Constant		6.1	0.86	—
r ²		.82***
F(5, 33)		24.56

Note. GDP = gross domestic product; PPP = producer price parity; VIF = variance inflation factor.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, all tests two-tailed.

It can be seen that disagreement with premarital sex declined significantly with economic development (GDP), and births outside wedlock, whereas the slope for women at work was in the same direction (as predicted) but only marginally significant (.10 > p > .05). Disagreement with premarital sex increased significantly with the strength of marriage and Gallup religiosity, the former effect being much bigger (standardized regression coefficients of .32 compared with .20). The largest effect was for economic development (Ln GDP PPP, standardized regression coefficient of .41). Disapproval of premarital sex increased significantly with income inequality so that more equal societies were more tolerant of premarital sex.

Discussion

The data supported each of the six predictions in either the correlational or regression analyses. Acceptance of premarital sex increased with economic development (Prediction 1). Acceptance of premarital sex declined as the risk of major infectious diseases increased (Prediction 2, Table 1), but this effect was not independent of economic development possibly reflecting limitations of the measure used (Table 1). There was no significant effect for HIV/AIDS infection rate (Prediction 2, Table 1). Premarital sex was less accepted in countries having stronger marriage (Prediction 3, Tables 1 and 3), and this was the second strongest effect after GDP in the regression analysis (Table 3).

Acceptance of premarital sex increased with the proportion of births outside marriage, as predicted (Prediction 4), although this was a weak effect that disappeared with GDP partialed out in Table 1. Acceptance of premarital sex increased with female labor participation but this effect was only marginally significant in the regression analysis (Tables 1 and 3, Prediction 5). Disapproval of premarital sex was higher as religiosity rose (Prediction 6), an effect that was much larger in the correlational analysis than in the full regression with an r² of .52 compared with a standardized regression coefficient of .20 (Tables 1 and 3) supporting earlier research on the impact of religion upon cross-national differences in sexual attitudes (Adamczyk & Hayes, 2012). Of course, religion might affect what people say about sexuality without affecting their behavior. For instance, the most religious states in the United States had more subscriptions to online pornography despite endorsing conservative family values (Edelman, 2009).

Taken together, results show that attitudes to premarital sex across countries are affected by locally varying costs and benefits to the individual (Barber, 2015). This confirms the adaptability of sexuality to local conditions as found in an earlier study of attitudes to casual sex (Barber, 2008a).

Results diverged from cross-national predictors of casual sex (sociosexuality, Barber, 2008a), specifically regarding the null effects for HIV/AIDS in this study and for GDP in the earlier study. Such differences are not surprising based on previous research (and also given the fact that the DV was not significantly correlated with sociosexuality) but are heuristically valuable given that there is so little comparative research on premarital sexuality and its relation to other forms of sexual expression outside marriage. Existing evidence suggests that attitudes to premarital are very different from extramarital sex. Thus, agreement with premarital sex increased in the United States over time whereas approval of extramarital sex declined (Caplow et al., 2001, p. 77). Moreover, in Australia, there is a high acceptance of premarital sex (87 %) but intolerance of sex outside a committed relationship (83%; de Visser et al., 2014). Cross-cultural research found that premarital sex was tolerated in 60% of societies, whereas extramarital sex was disapproved of in 83% of societies (Broude, 1980).

The present study sought to investigate factors in cross-national variation in premarital sex about which relatively little is known. Note that these results may have little relevance to small-scale societies where, for instance, premarital sex is common despite the fact that marriage is strong in the sense that most people marry (Symons, 1979). There were some methodological limitations, of which the most important was reliance on attitudinal data rather than more concrete evidence, such as age of first intercourse, teenage infection rates with sexually transmitted diseases, and so forth. The present research supported the validity of attitudinal research on premarital sex in three ways. First, attitudes were validated against self-reported sexual behavior of single women (Wellings et al., 2006), a surprisingly strong association (r² = .85) implying that cross-national data on attitudes to premarital sex are virtually equivalent to behavioral data for research purposes. Second, the DV was significantly predicted by various objective measures ranging from economic development, to births outside wedlock, and marriage strength. Third, these predictors explained most of the variance in attitudes to premarital sex. Of course, the mechanisms through which attitudes to premarital sexuality change in response to varied social environments were not studied and may prove a fruitful area for further research.

If one accepts that attitudes to premarital sex are strongly predictive of actual premarital sexual activity in a country (Ku et al., 1998), what do these findings tell us about adaptability of premarital sex to the social environment such that it declines with costs to the individual, or increases with benefits? In general, results support the view that sexual behavior varies adaptively among nation-states. Approval of premarital sexuality increases with economic development, with weakness in the marriage market, and with declining nonsexual disease risks (an effect that was entirely attributable to development (Table 1). Most of the significant predictors of attitudes to premarital sex were correlated with development (Table 2).

In developed countries, where marriage is characteristically weak, where disease risks are reduced, where there are more births outside wedlock, where religion is weak, and where more women join the paid workforce, attitudes to premarital sex are more liberal. Acceptance of premarital sex thus mirrors concrete changes in lifestyle, such as increased age of marriage, and more women forming independent households. Such conditions are likely conducive to sex before marriage (due to enhanced romantic competition among women), and also to single parenthood (Barber, 2005; de Visser et al., 2014; Goldin, 1995). With economic development statistically controlled, attitudes to premarital sex were more favorable in countries where marriage was weak, where births outside wedlock were high, and where religion was weak (Table 3). So the evidence is consistent with adaptive variation in premarital sexuality across societies.

Footnotes

Appendix

Countries in the Sample and Percentage Rejection of Premarital Sex.

Country	Premarital sex
Country	Unacceptable (%)
Indonesia	97
Jordan	95
Pakistan	94
Palestine	94
Turkey	91
Egypt	90
Tunisia	89
Malaysia	87
Ghana	86
Lebanon	81
Kenya	79
Nigeria	77
Uganda	77
Philippines	71
India	67
Senegal	63
China	58
El Salvador	56
Bolivia	53
South Africa	48
Mexico	44
Israel	37
South Korea	35
Brazil	35
Russia	30
USA	30
Argentina	22
Poland	22
Venezuela	21
Japan	21
Canada	15
Australia	15
Chile	13
Britain	13
Greece	11
Italy	11
Czech	10
Spain	8
Germany	6
France	6

Source. Data from Pew Research Center (2014b).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Nigel Barber, hailing from Ireland, received his PhD in biopsychology from Hunter College, CUNY, and taught psychology at Bemidji State University and Birmingham Southern College. A prolific cross-national researcher, he accounts for societal differences in sexual and reproductive behavior using an innovative approach, known as evolutionary social science. His books include Why Parents Matter, The Science of Romance, Kindness in a Cruel World, The Myth of Culture: Why We Need a Genuine Natural Science of Societies, and Why Atheism Will Replace Religion: The Triumph of Earthly Pleasures Over Pie in the Sky. He blogs at Psychology Today (http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast) and the Huffington Post .

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