The Lancet has a series of article on global sexual behavior and reproductive health, a sort of global Kinsey report. In EurekaAlert:
The paper1 analyses data from 59 countries worldwide to answer questions such as when people start to have sex, how many sexual partners they have and whether they practise safer sex. The authors explore what the patterns and trends mean for sexual health and they review the literature on preventive approaches to improve sexual health status.
The paper contains a number of unexpected findings. In an age in which scare-stories about underage sex and promiscuity abound, there has in fact been no universal trend towards earlier sexual intercourse.
Another surprising finding is that it is the developed nations that report comparatively high rates of multiple partnerships, not those parts of the world which tend to have higher rates of HIV and AIDS, such as African countries. This has led the authors to suggest that social factors such as poverty, mobility and gender equality may be a stronger factor in sexual ill-health than promiscuity, and they call for public health interventions to take this into account.
Monogamy was found to be the dominant pattern in most regions of the world. Despite substantial regional variation in the prevalence of multiple partnerships, which is notably higher in industrialised countries, most people report having only one recent sexual partner. Worldwide, men report more multiple partnerships than women, but in some industrialised countries the proportions of men and women reporting multiple partnerships are more or less equal.
You can listen to Lancet Editor Richard Horton introducing the launch of the series here.