According the latest government research into American sexual behavior, more than a quarter of all men in their teens and early twenties have not been sexually active. The number is higher for women in the same age group. Pregnancy rates among the sexually active in that group are down by almost half.
From an article in the Washington Post on the data:
“The latest round of the quaintly named National Survey of Family Growth found that among 15-to-24-year-olds, 29 percent of females and 27 percent of males reported no sexual contact with another person ever – up from the 22 percent of both sexes when the survey was last conducted in 2002.
‘The public’s general perception is that when it comes to young people and sex, the news is bad and likely to get worse,’ said Bill Albert, chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, an advocacy organization in Washington.
The seventh and latest round of the survey, first done in 1973, provides a corrective to that view.
‘Many, many young people have been very receptive to the message of delaying sexual activity,’ Albert said. ‘There’s no doubt about it.’ He added that the nearly 40 percent reduction in teen pregnancy since the 1990s – which experts attribute to both increased condom use and increased abstinence – represents ‘extraordinary progress on a social issue that many once considered intractable.'”
Full article here.