Comment by michaelt
2 years ago
> i keep hearing that Millennials are having less sex than all previous generations
This article is about a longitudinal study; it follows "Alex" who was age 13 in 1997, i.e. born in 1984.
US teen birth rates have been falling a lot - 61 births per 1000 in 1991 fell to ~48 births per 1000 in 2002 (When Alex would have been 18) and continued falling to just 13.9 births per 1000 today according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/259518/birth-rate-among-...
You have probably heard reports that teenagers are having less sex today. The teen birth rate would seem to clearly show that. But "millenials" aren't teenagers any more, they're 30-40 year olds.
Why are some statistics awkwardly phrased in terms of "per 1000", "per 10k", "per 100k", etc. when we have a perfectly good shorthand for that?
13.9 per 1000 is 1.39%.
Just to be clear, this is not directed at parent, because it is phrased that way on the web page they cited. I'm just hoping someone here has the answer.
I remember reading somewhere that people, on average, understand integer ratios better than they understand percentages. As in you you write 283 out of 10,000 vs. 2.83% and then ask comprehension questions the former shows much better comprehension.
As a side note, I have personally encountered large number of adults who are unable to restate a percentage as a fraction, and even the idea that a percentage represents a fractional value is foreign to them.
Might be poor reporting, but it's not hard to find headlines like: Why millennials are having less sex than generation Xers[1]
1: https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/02/health/millennials-less-sex-t...
The article refers specifically to people aged 20-24 in 2016, but the headline just says "Millennials".
I, a millennial, was 30 by then.
My younger brother, a millennial, was only 23.
Millennials are people who were born between 1981 and 1996. Some millennials were having sex when other millennials were toddlers. I would call it poor reporting to call out a 15-year wide cohort when the research being reported spans a narrow 4 of those years.
That is an 8 year old article. Nearly half a generation ago. That article would how he comparing generation Z to older generations (assuming the focus was still on the average 20 something year old).