On average, adult Britons report to have had four sexual partners during their lifetime. Out of the 61 percent willing to answer a survey, adults between the ages of 40 and 59 had a median of six partners, the highest for all age groups. Adults between 18 and 29 years of age reported the lowest median, with only one partner.

On average, adult Britons report to have had four sexual partners during their lifetime. Out of the 61 percent willing to answer a survey, the men reported to have had a median of five partners, while women reported to have had three.

This statistic presents the number of sexual partners of respondents aged 40 to 70 years, from the United Kingdom (UK) as of January 2017. The largest share of respondents, at 39 percent stated that they had had between two and five sexual partners in their life.

As of 2005, people in the United States stated that they have had an average of 10.7 sexual partners, which is slightly above the global average of nine sexual partners.

Turkey in the lead?

Surveys on sensitive or very personal topics, like sexuality, are often to be taken with a grain of salt, but in this case, Turkey did not only lead the ranking in 2005, it also topped the one conducted in 2010 on the mean number of sexual partners. So is it likely that the Turkish people are sexually more prolific than everybody else? Another survey by another source suggests otherwise: It does not include Turkey when it comes to the countries with the most sexually active inhabitants but lists the Greek as the most active ones. In general, people tend to embellish their own activities, but also those of others – the disparity between the perceived and the actual number of times people have sex is staggering and similar everywhere around the world.

India the most monogamous?

Of those countries surveyed, Indian respondents report the lowest average number of sexual partners, only slightly surpassed by China. Both China and India struggle with a significant difference between the number of men and the number of women, and both countries largely adhere to conservative standards of sexuality that prohibit sex before marriage.

Characteristics of genetic instruments identified by GWAS to be associated with lifetime number of sexual partners.