Grant Bailly and Brad Wilcox, The Sex Recession: The Share of Americans Having Regular Sex Keeps Dropping, Institute for Family Studies, August 30,2025.
Between trade wars and armed conflicts across the world, there is talk of an impending economic downturn. And while we at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) are not equipped to forecast an economic recession, we can document a recession that already has America in its grips: the sex recession.
Americans are having a record low amount of sex. We find that in 1990, 55% of adults ages 18–64 reported having sex weekly, according to the General Social Survey (GSS). But around the turn of the millennium, that number began to dip: by 2010, less than half reported having sex weekly, and by 2024, of the more than 1,000 men and women queried on this topic by the GSS, that number had fallen to just 37 percent.
The sex recession has been documented previously, especially here at IFS. In 2016, Jean Twenge found that the decline is largely a cohort effect — younger generations are having less sex than their predecessors did. The causes? A decline in steady partnering, especially in marriage, and a decline in sexual frequency within couples.
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