The Sexy Consequences of Economic Growth

Foreign Policy magazine teams up with Durex condoms to bring sexy back in the form of a global survey of sexual behaviors. As you can see here, it's more fun to live in a rich country. This seems like one of those times when it would make sense to mention Daniel Bell's Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Kate Sheppard notes that "Icelanders and Germans lose their virginity earliest" but to me there's surprisingly little variance in this metric, with essentially all countries falling within the 16-19 range.

One interesting point, though, is that South Africa has the sexual profile of a developed country. Unfortunately, the graphic doesn't include any other African countries, so one can't tell if South Africa is typical of its region or else if this relates to the country's unusual history with apartheid.