Demographics of inceldom: Difference between revisions

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This article discusses the '''demographics of [[inceldom]]'''. It sheds light on the prevalence and rising trends of [[inceldom]], and more broadly, of sexual frustration, unstable relationships and loneliness for both sexes, which is accompanied by a substantial trend [[Teleiophilic delay|towards later or no marriage]], i.e. a decline in [[marriage]] traditions, as well as declining engagement in risky behavior and declining independence from the parents (see also [[causes of inceldom]]).

==Status==

Incels have diverse backgrounds regarding socioeconomic status and education [[dominance hierarchy|status]].<ref>Haydon, A. A., Cheng, M. M., Herring, A. H., McRee, A.-L., & Halpern, C. T. (2013). Prevalence and Predictors of Sexual Inexperience in Adulthood. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 43(2), 221–230. doi:10.1007/s10508-013-0164-3 </ref>

The graphs above for the overall U.S. population also point to a high rate of male Asian incels. Blacks having more sex, but fewer relationships compared to Whites may also be explained by racial differences in life history speed, so the graphs do not necessarily contradict each other. E.g. Blacks also have much higher rates of nonmarital births.<ref>https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States,_1940-2014.png</ref> As Blacks have a faster life history, implying a higher [[sex drive]], they probably feel distressed by inceldom sooner.

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|+Table 1: Demographics of the U.S., Reddit and subreddit [[/r/braincels]], %

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==Young incels in the U.S.==

{{see_also|[[Youngcel]]}}

Some findings suggest men with poor mating performance (e.g. experiencing singledom) are more prone to depressive symptoms, but other findings suggest that poor mating performance is related with equally lower well-being for both sexes (see [[adverse effects of inceldom]]). Yet, the difference in libido and coyness should imply that women, but not men, can get sex easily if they wanted. Women exhibit also a more [[fake depression|childish neuroticism]] overall which is also often not taken as seriously. There is a chance that both men and women are, however, substantially selected for [[arranged marriage]], so even though women might be able to get into a relationship easier, their behavioral dispositions might ultimately prevent them from doing so, possibly also driving them into an adverse condition when their marriage is not arranged for them and when there is no societal pressure to settle down (see [[evolutionary mismatch]]).

===Women decide over celibacy rates===

{{see_also|[[Femcel]], [[Briffault's law]] and [[Hypergamy]]}}

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===Denmark===

According to Project SEXUS 2017/2018, among 25-34 year olds, 5% of men compared to 3% of women, never had sex since they were 15 (N = 3495, p = 0.0025), however for older groups there were no sex differences.<ref>https://files.projektsexus.dk/2019-10-26_SEXUS-rapport_2017-2018.pdf</ref>

In an informal survey from 2009 from various AB online forums, only ABs 27% regarded themselves as "sub-5" on the [[decile]] scale, 71% were students, 25% were female (quite differently from incel communities), and about 80% of the users were between 23 and 40 years old.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20130904045515/http://ab-wiki.acc.de:80/wiki/index.php/Umfragen</ref>

[[File:Heiratsalter_lediger_Frauen_in_Deutschland_1910-2013.png|thumb|none|400px|Age at first marriage of German women (post-[[wall]]).]]

===India===

[[File:India_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png|thumb|350px|India population pyramid in 2020]]

The combination of strict [[marriage]] norms and [[female subordination]] may keep the incidence of male incels fairly low despite skewed sex ratio, though likely with substantial regional variation. On the other hand, the relatively low sexual activity despite high marriage rates may point to both men and women having less sex than they would prefer to have.

===Israel===

Israel also has the highest total fertility rate among the countries with a human development index (HDI) of .8 or above, indicating a "very high" level of development, and is a practical outlier in terms of fertility among the states with the very highest levels of development (>.9).<ref>http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/latest-human-development-index-ranking</ref>

This high fertility may point to a relatively low incel rate, as further evidenced by the relatively low search term popularity mentioned above.

This lower fertility may suggest incel-related issues may be more common among the non-Haredi, and particularly among secular Jews (43% of Jews aged over 20 in Israel as of 2020).<ref>https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/latest-population-statistics-for-israel</ref> It is important to note that these religious categories are broad, with the majority of Israeli Jews being actively religious, as indicated by the high rates of literal belief in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible, 56%), adherence to the Sabbath (56-78%) and Jewish dietary laws (69%), etc. Among Jews in Israel and the United States, the level of religious adherence seems to be strongly associated with higher fertility rates.<ref>https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2013/02/28/israel-demographic-miracle/</ref>

In order to infer the number of involuntary celibates in Israel's population and any shifts in this regard, is likely most informative to examine the trend of singlisation in the population.

Between 1990 and 2009, the number of citizens living by themselves doubled, with slightly more men living on their own in younger age groups.<ref name="jpost"></ref>

This singlehood gap is perhaps reflective of a weak trend of polygynous partnerships among that age cohort and women's general tendency to partner with men older than themselves.

===Italy===

{{see_also|[[Italian incelosphere]]}}

One informal survey suggests Italian adults have on average slightly more sex than the world's average.<ref>https://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/survey-reveals-italians-have-more-sex-global-average-and-sex-kitchen</ref>

===Japan===

In 2016, a government survey found evidence of 541,000 [[hikikomori]] living in a country of 127 million people.<ref>https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/the-world-of-american-hikikomori.html</ref>

The survey also found a record number of “sexless” married couples.<ref>https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00161/</ref>

Another study found between 1992 and 2015, the age-standardized proportion of 18-39-year-old Japanese adults who were single had increased, from 27.4 to 40.7% among women and from 40.3 to 50.8% among men.<ref>Ghaznavi C, Sakamoto, H, et al. 2020. ''The herbivore’s dilemma: Trends in and factors associated with heterosexual relationship status and interest in romantic relationships among young adults in Japan—Analysis of national surveys, 1987–2015.'' [[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241571 Article]] [[https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPillScience/comments/jrglg5/between_1992_and_2015_the_agestandardized/ Discussion]]</ref>

===Netherlands===

In a survey from 2017, among 25-39 year olds, 8% (N = 427) of men but only 4% (N = 687) of women never had sex which is significantly different (Chi² = 8.053, p = 0.0045). Among 18-24 year olds, it was 25% (N = 4934) of men and 19% (N = 8216) of women, also significantly different (Chi² = 66.3, p < 0.0001).<ref>https://www.rutgers.nl/sites/rutgersnl/files/PDF-Onderzoek/Seksuele_Gezondheid_in_NL_2017_23012018.pdf</ref>

As women seem to have a strong sexual preference for higher-status and financially provident men (especially when it comes to long-term relationships, and it does seem from this study that many women are still waiting for marriage to engage in sex in the ROK), a substantial portion of Korean men are likely falling below the minimum threshold of either that women generally require in their [[betabuxx|male partners]] for either trait, especially vis-à-vis women's increasing status in these realms.

This and the fact that men greatly sexually prefer younger women likely play a role in driving male involuntary celibacy in the ROK. A large part of the sex gap in sex rates by age is likely explicable by Korean women marrying older men. Thus the competition among men for young fertile women in this country is most likely extremely intense, leaving young men who are uncompetitive in the dating market without a female partner.

====Seoul====

There was a pronounced sex difference with how celibacy rates were distributed across age groups, with 42% males aged between 19-29 reporting being sexless (the highest among men), which was even higher than the number of men aged 60+ who were sexless. Among women, this sexuality-age relationship was reversed, with women over 60 years old being the most likely to report being sexless in the last year.

Unlike Ahn et al., this survey did not find evidence for lower sexlessness rates among young Seoulite women (aged 19-29) than men of the same age. The sex gap in celibacy rates among old people can likely be partially explained by the ROK's prominent prostitution industry and the tendency of men to date/marry women younger than then, though the median age gap in terms of first marriage in South Korea is small and comparable to most Western countries.<ref>https://www.statista.com/statistics/1112935/south-korea-median-age-at-first-marriage-by-gender/</ref>

Some of this effect may also be driven by the increasing tendency for South Korea men to import foreign bridges, chiefly from poorer Asian countries such as China, The Philippines, and Vietnam, with the husband-wife age gap in such relationships being larger on average.<ref>https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171116000879</ref>

====Foreign brides====

Indeed, Raymo & Park (2020) found that declines in marriage rates for lower-educated men were more driven by changes in marital market composition (more educated women) compared to more highly educated men, and that the increasing tendency for men of low SES (as judged by education) to seek marriage with foreign women helped to flatten the decline in marriage that would've occurred in that cohort based on their projections. The increasing trend to import foreign brides made little difference to marriage trends for highly educated men.<ref>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7382948/</ref>

This marriage pattern is congruent with a general trend of citizenship hypergamy in international marriages where women from poorer countries tend to marry men from wealthier countries.<ref>https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306441557_Why_Do_Finnish_Men_Marry_Thai_Women_But_Finnish_Women_Marry_British_Men_Cross-National_Marriages_in_a_Modern_Industrialized_Society_Exhibit_Sex-Dimorphic_Sexual_Selection_According_to_Primordial_Selec</ref>

The number of South Korean men married to foreign women has more than doubled from 2007-2019,<ref>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57716704</ref> and some local governments in South Korea grant subsidies to men who seek foreign brides in an effort to ameliorate South Korea's low fertility rate crisis.<ref>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48917935</ref> This increase in Korean men married to foreign women has occurred despite increased regulation of the foreign marriage broker industry, partly in response to concerns surrounding human trafficking and the widespread abuse of foreign-born wives by the Korean men who are married to them,<ref>https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/06/29/how-south-korean-demographics-are-affecting-immigration-and-social-change-pub-84819</ref> though some have criticized the lax nature of these regulations and claimed that the drive to increase the low birthrates in Korea continues to be a prevailing concern for South Korean policymakers in this area.<ref>https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/901613.html</ref>

In terms of proportionate amounts, the amount of new marriages involving Korean men married to foreign born brides has been stagnant since the late 2000s.

====Low fertility====

A high cost of living, a strenuous and extremely competitive education system, declines in social solidarity, increases in female education, increasing pessimism, the rise of the 'gig economy', [[Social epistasis amplification model|dysgenics]], female hypergamy,<ref>https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-021-09672-5</ref> and a growing militant feminist reaction against Korea's generally patriarchal Confucian marriage culture<ref>https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177439.shtml</ref><ref>https://www.jstor.org/stable/40378774</ref> have all been proposed as potential explanations for this decline in fertility.

Like in other developed economies, declines in fertility in South Korea have been associated with a greater age at reproduction, longer spaces between generations, and smaller family sizes. There has also been a general shift where Korean women, who, even after the demographic transition shifted Korea to sub-replacement fertility, previously had very high rates of childbirth across their lifetimes combined with smaller families centered around two children, are increasingly childless for life.<ref>https://www.jstor.org/stable/26457056?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents</ref>

Other initiatives were launched in 2010 and 2016, respectively. Such initiatives were focused primarily on financially incentivizing reproduction. This has been proposed to be an overly narrow approach which ignores important sociological factors, hence the failure of these policies. Park (2020) argues that policies that focus on providing cost of living support, promoting work-life balance and measures to encourage social cohesion and integration, as has been attempted to varying degrees of success across Japan, would be more adequate in helping to alleviate the increasing social burden of South Korea's period of 'lowest low' fertility.<ref>https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12126-020-09365-y</ref>

===Switzerland===

In a 2017 survey of 26 year olds, 5.3% were still [[virgin]]s. Men were slightly overrepresented among these adult virgins, with 58% of them being male.<ref>Suris, J.-C., Auderset, D., Akre, C., & Barrense-Dias, Y. (2020). 215. Virgins at Age 26: Who are They? Journal of Adolescent Health, 66(2), S109. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2019.11.218 </ref>

===Turkey===

Data on the prevalence of involuntary celibacy in Turkey is hard to come by, with there being no national representative surveys that examine sexual issues. Much research into proxy measures, such as sexual frequency, level of sexual experience, etc., is generally restricted to samples drawn from Turkey's Mediterranean and Asia Minor regions. These regions are less socially conservative in comparison to the Anatolian Islamic heartland of that nation.

In a survey by YouGov from 2019, around 18% of men said they had no close friends. Only 12% of women said the same.<ref>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041784</ref><ref>https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7488709/One-five-men-no-friends-loneliness-epidemic-leaves-thousands-living-isolation.html</ref>

Further, 88% of Britons aged from 18 to 24 said they experience loneliness to some degree, 24% often and 7% saying they are lonely all of the time.<ref>https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/unlock-loneliness/research-briefing</ref>

==See also==

*[[Adverse effects of inceldom]]

*[[Causes of inceldom]]

*[[Teleiophilic delay]]

==References==

<references />