Asexuality: prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample

Journal of Sex Research, August, 2004 by Anthony F. Bogaert

Demographics

As also shown in Table 1, some significant relationships occurred between asexuality and the demographics. Contrary to prediction, asexual people were not younger than sexual people; in fact, they were somewhat older. However, as predicted, more women than men reported being asexual. Not surprisingly, there were fewer asexual people than sexual people currently in (or having had) a long-term relationship. On the other hand, a significant minority of the asexual people, 85 of the 195 (44%), were currently in or had had long-term cohabiting or marital relationships, with 64 (33%) currently married or cohabitating (see Diamond, 2003, for a distinction between romantic and sexual desire/attraction). Asexual individuals were also more likely than sexual individuals to come from lower socioeconomic conditions. A higher percentage (13%) of asexual individuals were also non-White relative to the sexual individuals (4%). Finally, asexual individuals were less well educated than the sexual individuals.

Health, Physical Development, and Religiosity

Asexual people were more likely to have adverse health, and the asexual women had a later onset of menarche relative to the sexual women. Asexual people were also shorter and weighed less than the sexual people. Finally, there was some evidence that asexual people were more religious than sexual people, at least with regard to attendance at religious services.

Multivariate Analyses

I conducted logistic regressions, one for men and one for women, with asexuality (0 = sexual, 1 = asexual) as the criterion and the significant demographics (except for gender and marital status/cohabitation), religiosity, and health and physical development factors as simultaneously entered predictors. The results of these analyses are shown in Table 2. For women, the majority of the predictors--age, social class, race-ethnicity, education, menarche, height, and religiosity--were significant. Thus, all of these variables accounted for unique variation in the prediction of asexuality. Only weight and health were not significant. However, when social class, and education were eliminated from the regression equation health was significant, suggesting that health and social class (and education) are related (e.g., Link & Phelan, 1995; Ross & Van Willigen, 1997) and that the health problems of asexual women may be partly the result of economic problems experienced by individuals of lower socioeconomic status. (3)

For men, social class, education, height (marginal), and religiosity were significant, and therefore all of these variables accounted for unique variation in the prediction of asexuality. As in women, health was not significant. However, similar to the results for women, when social class and education were eliminated from the regression equation, health was significant, suggesting again that health and social class (and educational attainment) are related (e.g., Link & Phelan, 1995; Ross & Van Willigen, 1997). (4,5)

DISCUSSION