Dollars and Sex (5 page)

In light of new changes to marriage laws in many countries and in response to greater societal acceptance of same-sex relationships, it seems that gay men are opting less for casual sex and instead having committed relationships.

In 1996, a U.S. Gallup poll found that 68 percent of respondents indicated that they were opposed to laws that would allow same-sex couples to be married with the same rights as in opposite-sex marriages. Just fifteen years later, many people have changed their opinion on same-sex marriage; only 44 percent of respondents indicated that they were opposed to legalizing same-sex marriage. Likewise, tolerance toward same-sex preferences, in general, has been on the rise. For example, the percentage of
people who believe that sexual relations between two adults of the same gender are not wrong at all has increased from 15 percent in 1991 to 43 percent in 2010.

In the United States, the acceptability of same-sex relationships varies not only from person to person but also from state to state. We will talk more about who does, and does not, support same-sex marriage in
chapter 6
. However, for now those state-by-state variations in same-sex marriage laws and in tolerance toward same-sex relationships create a possibility for economists to test the following hypothesis: in states where people are more tolerant and/or have no ban on same-sex marriage, members of the gay community engage in less promiscuous behavior. Thankfully for us, testing this hypothesis this is just what Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon have done.

They prove the hypothesis by testing to see if states in which the public is less tolerant of same-sex relationships have more places in which gay men might meet for anonymous sex (parks, beaches, restrooms, and other public grounds that have been identified by a gay men's travel magazine). They find that a 20-percentage-point rise in tolerance decreases the average number of such meeting places in a state by about four places. If that doesn't convince you that promiscuity has decreased, a similar increase in tolerance (20 percentage points) is also associated with a decrease in HIV of one per hundred thousand of the population. They find the imposition of a same-sex marriage ban increases the HIV rate by between three and five new HIV cases per hundred thousand.

This result may seem counterintuitive; after all, I have just argued that the destigmatization of premarital sex has increased promiscuity among heterosexuals. So why should the destigmatization of sex between people of the same gender decrease promiscuity within that community? It is because an increase in tolerance changes both the way that currently openly gay men behave and encourages other men who had previously been fearful of revealing their sexual orientation to come out of the closet, so to speak.

For men who already have a gay lifestyle, increased tolerance makes it possible to have committed relationships without incurring the costs that intolerance imposes (including, incidentally, being paid a lower wage because of their sexual orientation). Alternatively, for men who have chosen to either have no sex life or to act as heterosexual men, increased tolerance makes it possible for them to be openly gay without incurring the costs intolerance imposes (including, incidentally, not being able to marry and have a family).

So promiscuity in the gay community falls when the stigma attached to same-sex preference declines, both because men who would otherwise have been promiscuous are more likely to be in a relationship and because men who are less promiscuous by nature (for example, men who are more family oriented) are willing to join that community.

FINAL WORDS

I know this methodology seems to impose too much rational behavior on an event that often begins with a man and a woman meeting in a bar and ends with some poor hungover individual stumbling home in her high heels in the blinding morning sun. I am not suggesting that all individuals do this promiscuity math every time they have sex, or ever, for that matter. In economics, all that matters is that people behave
as if
they are solving a cost-benefit problem—they may not calculate the expected cost of promiscuity, for example, but when economic factors change costs, men and women respond by making different decisions than they might have otherwise.

This economic approach helps us understand not only why we have experienced a liberalization of sexual values over the twentieth century, but also how the growing gap in incomes between the rich and the poor has led to high rates of unintended pregnancies among poorer women. It is because those women behave as if they have estimated the low probability of finding a husband who can afford a wife and family, or the probability that they will be able to go to college and have a rewarding career, and they have found that the benefits of casual, risky sex exceeded the expected costs.

Taking into consideration economic factors such as income and education also prevents us from lapsing into a mistaken belief that access to contraceptive technologies is entirely responsible for promiscuous behavior today. Birth control may have historically played a role in stimulating the social change that brought us to where we are in terms of sexual freedoms today, particularly for women, but viewing current behavior as a function of access to birth control technology alone paints an incomplete picture. This is especially important because while birth control technology is unlikely to become any more efficient, economy factors are constantly changing—especially as governments adopt, and abandon, programs that influence the distribution of income and access to higher education.

Speaking of higher education, we are about to delve into the realm of the hammered and horizontal academics. Student behavior has been
influenced by increased access to contraceptives and changing social norms, just like that of everyone else. Because they are investing in education, they are subject to even greater pressure to avoid a costly mistimed pregnancy, or any other event that will make it difficult for them to finish school. Do these concerns reduce their promiscuity? Of course not! In fact, if any one knows about promiscuity, it is college students ... or at least that is what they like to tell me.

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Once, while I was working as a research assistant (coincidentally for the same eminent economist who is now giving the Casanova talk), I had the opportunity to look to the U.S. Census to see how many woman had both given birth as a single parent and completed a PhD. You can probably guess the answer—not one.

MY STUDENTS THINK THAT THEIR GENERATION INVENTED PREMARITAL SEX

This is not an exaggeration. And even students whom I can convince otherwise continue to argue that even if they aren't the first generation to have sex before marriage, they are certainly getting more action than anyone else. When I show them evidence that university students have sex less frequently, on average, than do people their age who are not students, they protest vociferously. Their proof? Well, of course everyone knows that university students have more sex.

I sometimes worry that this is why my students are in college.

There are two possible explanations for their skewed perception. The first is that the students in my sex and love class are not representative of students in general; they are having far more sex than anyone else on campus. Maybe that is true, but, to be honest with you, they already give me too much information, and so I would rather not know if this is the case. The second, more defensible, explanation is that my class is overpopulated with male students.
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And right now, more than ever before, university campuses are great places for young men who are looking for sex.

Let me tell you a story that illustrates how economics helps us understand how the market for sex operates on university campuses.

It's a Thursday night and, as anyone who works on a university campus will tell you, Thursday is the new Friday (which, if you ask me, is why the fifth year of college is the new fourth year). A group of female friends is hanging out at an off-campus bar that is packed wall-to-wall with well-lubricated students out for the night. This bar allows students too young to drink legally to come in, but it doesn't serve them alcohol, so the women in our group (some of whom are below legal drinking age and some of whom are not) started drinking hours ago on the front porch of the house they share. They are very drunk and dancing mostly with each other because in this bar, as on campus, there are far more women than men.

The women in the group are all friends, but they differ in what they are looking for when they go out on a Thursday night. Some will use their own drunken state as an excuse to hook up with anyone who is willing. Others will ignore the guys who come by looking for action, interested only in hanging out with their friends. The remainder will enjoy the male attention, not because they are looking to hook up, but because they are looking for a relationship that will last more than one night.

Sarah, our main character in this story, is in this final group of women who are looking for a relationship. It isn't that she doesn't like casual sex; it is just that she has learned the hard way that the events of a night that starts with a group of friends drinking can have life-altering consequences.

Her lesson started a year ago, one night at the beginning of her first term on campus, in this same bar where she was happily drinking and having a good time with her new college friends. She had been on her way to the bathroom when a man she was passing grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back to the bar, proclaiming that she looked like she could use another shot. She was so drunk, and he was so good-looking, that all she could do was to laugh in response. After a few drinks, he suggested they go back to her residence to hang out, and to her that seemed like a pretty good idea. After a brief period of actual hanging out, she found herself in her dorm room doing what she believed everyone else on campus was
also doing—having random sex with a virtual stranger. Later she remembered having asked if he had a condom and that he had told her just to relax, so that is what she did. She blacked out shortly after, only vaguely remembering the next day that she had woken up at one point to see him pulling on his jeans by the door, complaining that he had left his credit card in the bar.