How Many Americans Have Sex Before Marriage? What the Data Show

How common is sex before marriage in the US?

Sex before marriage is close to universal in the United States: in the most cited federal-survey analysis, 95% of Americans had had premarital sex by age 44. The study, by Lawrence B. Finer of the Guttmacher Institute, appeared in Public Health Reports in 2007 under the title "Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954–2003." It reported 94% for women and 96% for men, and it found that 97% of people who had ever had intercourse had done so before marrying ^[1]. Finer summed up his own result in one short sentence: almost all Americans have sex before marrying ^[1].

The measure matters. Finer counted intercourse that occurred before a person's first marriage, and he followed respondents across ages, so that the share rises as a cohort grows older. By age 20, 75% of all respondents had had premarital sex, while 77% had had sex of any kind and only 12% had married by that age ^[1]. By age 44, 99% had had sex, 85% had married, and 1.3% had neither married nor had sex ^[1].

The gap between genders is small. Finer noted that men were slightly more likely than women to have had premarital sex at nearly every age, but the study reported no significant difference between men and women in the likelihood of having sex at all ^[1]. The headline conclusion therefore holds for both sexes: abstaining from intercourse until a first wedding is a minority experience, and a very small one.

One further point is easily missed. The measure is whether a person had intercourse before a first marriage, not how often or with how many partners, and the study does not say anything about the number of partners. The statistic therefore describes a social norm, and it should not be read as a measure of sexual frequency.

These figures describe behavior, not approval. How Americans judge the behavior is a separate question, and the polls discussed later in this article show that moral acceptance has moved on a different schedule from conduct.

Premarital sex in the US: key figures from National Survey of Family Growth data (Finer, 2007)

Group	Measure	Share
All respondents	Premarital sex by age 20	75%
All respondents	Premarital sex by age 44	95% (94% of women, 96% of men)
All respondents	Abstained until marriage, by age 44	3.3%
Women who turned 15 in 1954-1963	Premarital sex by age 20	48%
Women who turned 15 in 1964-1973	Premarital sex by age 20	65%
Women who turned 15 in 1974-1983	Premarital sex by age 20	72%
Women who turned 15 in 1984-1993	Premarital sex by age 20	76%
Women who turned 15 in 1994-2003	Premarital sex by age 20	74%

Has premarital sex become more common since the 1950s?

Yes: it rose sharply across the groups that turned 15 between the mid-1950s and the 1980s, and then leveled off at a high rate. Finer compared five groups of women, defined by the years in which they turned 15, using four rounds of the National Survey of Family Growth conducted between 1982 and 2002 ^[1]. The share who had premarital sex by age 20 rose from 48% for women who turned 15 in 1954–1963 to 65% for the next group, 72% for the one after, and 76% for those who turned 15 in 1984–1993 ^[1].

For the youngest group, who turned 15 between 1994 and 2003, the figure was 74%, which the study did not treat as a meaningful decline from 76% ^[1]. Among the oldest group, 82% had had premarital sex by age 30 and 88% by age 44; for the three groups that followed (those who turned 15 in 1964–1993), at least 91% had done so by age 30 ^[1]. In other words, the change across the twentieth century was less about whether people had sex before marriage than about when, and the earlier timing was largely in place by the groups that turned 15 in the 1970s and 1980s.

Alongside this change, the age at first marriage kept rising. Finer reported that the median age at first marriage grew from 22.1 to 25.8 for women and from 24.4 to 27.4 for men over about 25 years, and he described the typical interval between puberty and a first marriage as roughly 13 years ^[1]. A later chapter of the story is told in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey figures for 2025, which put the median age at first marriage at 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women ^[5]. The longer the stretch between first sex and a wedding, the more nearly universal the premarital experience becomes. For more on that trend, see the article on later marriage and premarital sex.

How many Americans wait until marriage?

Very few: in Finer's analysis, 3.3% of respondents had abstained from intercourse until marriage by age 44 ^[1]. A further 1.3% had neither married nor had sex, so the combined group of people with no premarital sex was small ^[1]. These percentages come from the 2002 survey, which is the basis for the commonly quoted figure of about 3% ^[1].

Waiting is also hard to sustain once a person has passed the early teens. Among respondents who had not had sex by age 20, who made up 28% of the sample, 81% had premarital sex before turning 44 ^[1]. Among those who had abstained until at least 18, 89% went on to have premarital sex, and among those who had abstained until at least 15, the figure was 94% ^[1]. Even for people who started out as abstainers, the later years of singlehood accounted for most of the change.

A federal brief on teenagers gives a feel for the beginning of this timeline. In the 2015–2017 round of the National Survey of Family Growth, 42% of never-married females and 38% of never-married males aged 15 to 19 had ever had sexual intercourse ^[3]. The share of males had fallen from 44% in 2011–2015, a statistically significant drop, and from 46% in 2002 ^[3]. Modeled estimates from the same brief put the probability of first intercourse by age 20 at 79% for females and 77% for males, close to the 75% that Finer reported for premarital sex by age 20 ^[1][3].

Two things follow. A sizable minority of Americans postpone sex into their twenties, but nearly all of them stop postponing before they marry. And the long-run decline in teen sexual activity that the brief documents does not change the adult picture, because the gap before the median wedding is now so long ^[3][5].

Where do these figures come from?

The main source is the National Survey of Family Growth, a federal survey run by the National Center for Health Statistics. Finer drew on its 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 cycles, with samples of between about 7,600 and 10,800 women in each cycle, and on 4,928 men interviewed in 2002, the first cycle to include men ^[1]. The 95% figure is therefore a 2002 snapshot, published in 2007, and it should not be read as a 2026 measurement.

The approach has limits that careful readers should keep in mind. Respondents report their own histories in interviews, and the study cannot say whether people who skipped premarital sex did so for religious, personal or practical reasons. It also counts only intercourse as defined by the survey and does not describe other aspects of intimacy ^[1]. Finally, the 2002 data pre-date smartphones, dating apps and the pandemic, so nothing in them speaks to recent shifts in dating patterns.

More recent federal releases focus on narrower groups, such as the 2015–2017 teen brief cited above, which drew on 924 female and 886 male respondents aged 15 to 19 ^[3]. For lifetime premarital sex among all adults, no newer estimate of the same kind was located for this article. Any statement that the figure is "now higher" or "now lower" than 95% would therefore go beyond the published evidence. The same gap applies to the claim, sometimes made online, that rates among people in their twenties have fallen sharply, which the sources consulted here do not establish.

How have attitudes changed alongside behavior?

Acceptance has risen much more slowly than behavior, and it has slipped in the most recent Gallup reading. Gallup first asked in 1969 whether it is wrong for a man and a woman to have sexual relations before marriage: 68% said it was wrong and 21% said it was not ^[4]. By 1973 the split was 47% to 43%, by 1985 it was 39% wrong to 52% not wrong, and by May 2001 it was 38% to 60% ^[4].

Gallup then switched to a different wording, asking whether sex between an unmarried man and woman is morally acceptable. Acceptance was 53% in 2001, climbed to 68% in 2015, reached 76% in 2022, and then declined to 72% in 2023, 69% in 2024, 68% in 2025 and 65% in 2026 ^[2][7]. In the 2026 survey, fielded May 1–17 with 1,001 adults and a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points, 65% called such sex morally acceptable and 31% called it morally wrong ^[6].

Age and politics divide opinion. In 2001, 67% of young adults (a group Gallup did not define by age) found premarital sex acceptable, against 28% of those 65 and older ^[4]. In 2026, acceptance was 46% among Republicans, 66% among independents and 83% among Democrats ^[6]. For the full story of the poll results, see American attitudes toward sex outside marriage.

Put side by side, the numbers tell a plain story. By the time Gallup recorded a majority saying premarital sex was not wrong (52% in 1985), the behavior was already the norm for most adults, which suggests that public opinion has followed practice rather than led it ^[1][4]. A legal angle also exists: states such as Georgia still have fornication provisions on the books, though they are considered unenforceable against consenting adults in private, as explained in the guide to state fornication laws.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of people are virgins when they marry?

About 3%. In the National Survey of Family Growth analysis published in 2007, 3.3% of respondents had abstained from intercourse until marriage by age 44. The figure comes from 2002 data, and no newer estimate of the same kind was found.

Do religious Americans wait longer?

The analysis cited here did not break results down by religion, so it cannot say. What it shows is that abstaining until marriage was rare overall: only about 3% of all respondents did so. Surveys of attitudes, covered in the article on faith and sex outside marriage, show large differences between religious groups in what people consider acceptable.

Is premarital sex more common than in the past?

Yes, compared with the 1950s and early 1960s, but it has been roughly stable since the groups that came of age in the 1980s. Among women, 48% of the earliest cohort studied had premarital sex by age 20, against 76% of those who turned 15 in 1984–1993. The youngest cohort, at 74%, was statistically similar to the previous one.

How many Americans have had sex by age 20?

About three in four. Finer's analysis found that 77% of respondents had had sex of any kind by age 20 and 75% had had premarital sex. A federal brief on 2015–2017 data estimated 79% of females and 77% of males had first intercourse by age 20.

Do men or women have premarital sex more often?

The difference is small. By age 44, 96% of men and 94% of women had had premarital sex. Men were slightly more likely at nearly every age, but the study found no significant gender gap in having sex at all.

Do most Americans think sex before marriage is wrong?

No. In Gallup's May 2026 poll, 65% said sex between an unmarried man and woman is morally acceptable and 31% said it is morally wrong. Acceptance peaked at 76% in 2022 and has declined each year since.