Overview

• The PNAS analysis drew on about 400,000 UK Biobank participants aged 39–73 and 13,500 Australians aged 18–89, estimating lifelong sexlessness at roughly 1 percent.
• Common genetic variation accounted for about 17% of the likelihood in men and 14% in women, with no single gene of large effect and two genome-wide loci of very small effect reported.
• Shared genetic architecture linked the trait with higher education and measured intelligence, positive correlations with introversion, autism spectrum traits and anorexia, and negative correlations with substance use, depression, anxiety and ADHD.
• Sexlessness was more common in regions with greater income inequality and, for men, in areas with relatively fewer women, and men who had not had sex tended to show lower upper-body strength.
• Participants who had never had sex reported more loneliness and lower happiness alongside less drug and alcohol use, and the authors stress that the findings are correlational and do not separate voluntary from involuntary sexlessness or extend beyond European-ancestry samples.