• More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study.
• The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
• The Guttmacher Institute study examined how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time. 
  • The research was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth.
• 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.
• Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44
• The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago.
• Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.
• By the exact age of 20 years, 77% of individuals had had sex, and 75% had had sex before marriage; 12% had married.
• By exact age 44, 99% of Americans had had sex, 95% had had sex before marriage, and 85% had married.
• At that age, 3.3% had abstained until marriage, and 1.3% had neither married nor had sex.

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