Love and Economics

Haven’t you always felt that we all — men and women — would like to be having more sex than we actually are having. I get disappointed when I see stats about the paltry amount of sex that people, especially those in long term relationships, are having. Surely, something as pleasurable as sex must be worth more than a few stolen dalliances a month. But, at the same time, life is busy… we have other stuff we need to get done.

Well… it turns out we do want more sex. A lot more. For women, 106 minutes every day in fact (I couldn’t find an equivalent study for men). Economists have proven it.

First the theoretical basis; and bear with me through this paragraph. Economics works on the theory that we allocate our time and our money efficiently. When given an additional minute or an extra dollar we will use that in a way that maximizes the pleasure — or ‘utility’ as economists say — that can be derived from that additional minute or dollar. This drives our whole market system. Businesses decide whether to hire an additional employee based on whether one more employee will provide more pleasure (profit) than pain (cost). If an individual has an extra 5 dollars at the end of the week, she decides whether she would get more pleasure from saving that extra 5 dollars toward retirement or buying a latte. Similarly, when we have extra time, we allocate it toward where that little bit of extra time will give us the most happiness.

Thus the emergence of the economics of happiness — That term — utility. It used to make this massive assumption that the only thing we, as humans, valued was the production of stuff. So the extra dollar or minute of time would be put to whatever could create the most new stuff. But then economists started to realize that we also value things like more leisure time, relationships, and .. yes.. sex. So we began to think think about how to optimally spend time and money on all the things that are useful to us.

And sex does really, really well.

An academic study of women in Texas asked them to record all of their daily activities and to allocate ‘pleasure factors’ to each. So, for example, if you were having a coffee, what was the pleasure factor? When you were making dinner, what was the pleasure factor? And an important consideration… they asked study participants to consider, in giving the pleasure factor, how much it contributed to both immediate and long term happiness. So, you may not be loving cooking dinner, but you liked eating it.. so its kind of pleasurable. They were trying to understand whether women were using their time optimally and putting their time toward things that gave them short and long term happiness.

Not surprisingly, things like commuting ranked really low, even in the context of knowing it was necessary to earn a living. Sex rated highest. When the economists conducting the study ran their numbers, they found that the optimal pleasure maximizing allocation would have women spending 106 minutes a day having sex — and less than 30 minutes commuting.

I shared this information with a few friends. My academic friend (an economics professor) was quick to point out that studies like this overemphasize short term pleasure and discount ‘investments’ in long term happiness and satisfaction. Sure. Everyone agreed with that, but conversely felt that day to day pressures actually motivated them to over-emphasize ‘responsible’ activities, and discount short term pleasure. Everyone else — when they stepped back and considered it — said ‘yeah, why am I not spending more time having sex’. Even the economist agreed with that.

So, not surprisingly, the consensus seemed to be that everyone would probably like a fair bit more sex in their lives. 106 minutes a day might be a little high… but more.

I understand that real life gets in the way and that responsibilities sometimes trump pleasure. But isn’t it nice to know that, if we could, we’d be makig a lot more time for sex.

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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.

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