StatWing Finding #9: Black vs. Female President

(Data source: https://export.statwing.com/p0/datasets/dat_c5PMCMjP3nSEEHLK9fUVIIgvtdgWgzHV)

Is the United States ready to accept a woman as President? When Obama and Hillary Clinton ran for the Democratic nomination, it was the first time the country had to seriously consider someone who wasn't a White Man for the office of President of the U.S. Was the country more inclined to favor a Black Male leader or a White Female leader?

Of course, we know the outcome of the race, but was there data that could have predicted it?

Looking at the data set above, through the years since 1972  public acceptance of a Female President was leading acceptance of a Black President by a couple years. 

In 1972, only 69% of people surveyed said they'd vote for a Black President. Compare that to 78% who said they'd vote for a Female president.

Thirty-six years later in 2008, public sentiment evened out and the acceptance of a Black vs. a Female President was roughly the same.

The 2008 Democratic nomination race was fair game in terms of public opinion on race vs. gender. It really came down to who was perceived as the better candidate.

Something interesting happens, though, in 2010 (1+ year into Barrack Obama's term). Obama's successful start to his term continued to drive public opinion favorably towards a Black President. 

However, look what happened to public opinion on a Female President. People were less likely in 2010 to vote for a Female President than they were 20 years ago. In fact, the survey results in 2010 echo those in 1982, nearly 3 decades earlier. Not only are people less sure on the topic ("Don't Know" increased from 1% to 3%) but they were much less likely to vote for a Female President, with favor-ability dropping 10%.

What could have caused public opinion on having a Female President to suffer such a huge setback? Did Hillary losing the nomination cause people to doubt the efficacy of a Female President? Did Sarah Palin and the relentless mockery of her Vice President candidacy deal a damaging blow to public opinion of a Female President? How long will it take to sway public opinion back the other way? Another 30 years? What does this say about Hillary Clinton's chances if she runs in 2016?

StatWing Finding #8: Household Type & Prison Time

(Data source: https://export.statwing.com/p0/datasets/dat_c5PMCMjP3nSEEHLK9fUVIIgvtdgWgzHV)

I'll be honest, I'm not too sure what to make of this, but it definitely feels like there's something here. 

The survey defines Household Type with a wide range of choices from Single Adult to Cohabitating with children. But what does that have to do with Prison Time?  Where's the correlation?  When I charted it out and sorted the Household Types by how likely someone had spent any time in prison, I noticed something interesting.

It would seem that people in unstable households are more likely to have spent time in prison than people who are in stable households.

That's only if you agree with the following assumptions regarding how different household factors impact stability:

• Marriage -- increases stability (having a committed partner can help you weather any storm)
• Children -- decrease stability (raising kids is stressful but manageable if married)
• Cohabitating -- decreases stability (are you committed? are you not? where is it leading? how do you plan your future around that?)

By the above logic, the most stable household would be a Married Couple. The least stable household would be a Cohabitating Couple with Children - not only is your partner's commitment potentially in question but throw on top of that kids, how could it not be stressful?  

As you can see in the chart, the percentage of people who are in stable households who have spent time in prison (10%) is significantly less than people in unstable households (33%). 

Of course, there's really nothing that says a cohabitating couple is any more or less committed or "stable" than a married couple. It's just one convenient (and creative) interpretation of the data. But you gotta admit, the data makes it compelling to believe it.

StatWing Finding #7: Marriage & Sex

(Data source: https://export.statwing.com/p0/datasets/dat_c5PMCMjP3nSEEHLK9fUVIIgvtdgWgzHV)

Romantic comedies would have you believe that nothing kills your sex life like getting married. Is there any truth to this punchline? Who's got the more lively sex life - the unattached single or the blissfully married?

If keeping your active sex life was your only reason to stay single, then fear no more because it looks like the average married person has sex more often than the average non-married person!

In Finding #6 Sex These Days, I posted a chart showing how frequently people had sex in the past year.  If you just focus that data on Heterosexual/Straight people and how often they're having sex, you get some interesting results. Here's a look at married vs. non-married (never married, divorced, separated, widowed):

There was a lot of sex being had in 2012. But if you set that year aside for a moment, around 20% of non-married people did not have any sex in the past year. Looking at the other extreme, 30% of people had sex 2+ times a week over the past year. 

Let's look at married folks now. Nearly everyone who's married had sex within the past year. That's encouraging; marriage doesn't seem to outright kill your sex life. With marriage comes a commitment and unlike non-married folks, you don't have to find a sexual partner, so it's not too surprising that the percentage of married people who had no sex at all (2%) is significantly lower than non-married folks (20%). However, look at the percentage of married people who had sex 2+ times a week in the past year - nearly 40% (compared to 30% for non-married). And around 60% of all married people surveyed have sex at least weekly (compared to ~45% of non-married).

So, not only does marriage not kill your sex life, it could improve it!

* The dataset was limited to people Ages 25-50 and people who identified with being Heterosexual/Straight.

StatWing Finding #6: Sex These Days

(Data source: https://export.statwing.com/p0/datasets/dat_c5PMCMjP3nSEEHLK9fUVIIgvtdgWgzHV)

We are living in an arguably more sexually liberated society than ever before. People are more open about sex. Acceptance of same-sex partners is improving with gays and lesbians living more openly and states allowing same sex marriages. There's more sex and nudity on TV than ever before (<ahem>True Blood</ahem>). Does this mean we're a more sexualized society?  Are people having sex more often and with more partners?

When I first dug into this data, I kept discovering more and more interesting little tidbits - so much so that I'll probably have enough for more than one post, but for now, here are some interesting findings...

PREMARITAL SEX
It isn't too surprising that since 1972, people's view on the morality of sex before marriage has changed. It looks like the 80's ushered in the biggest shift in opinion. At the time, opinion was split 50/50 (a marked shift from 70% of people who thought it was wrong in the early 70's). 

Over the last 30 years, general opinion has flipped to where the majority of people think it's now OK to have premarital sex.

(Note, the scale of "Wrongness" ranges from "Sometimes Wrong" to "Always Wrong".)

AMOUNT SEX
Now let's look at how often people are having sex. There's really not a strong trend. And if anything, the number of people who didn't have any sex in the past year looks to be increasing slightly.  However, 2012 does stick out a little with a marked increase in the percentage of people who had sex in the past year. It looks like nearly everyone got some in 2012. Only 1% of survey respondents answered that they hadn't had any sex in the past year.

NUMBER OF SEXUAL PARTNERS
If more people believe it's OK to have sex before marriage and people are having sex more frequently, does that mean the number of sexual partners has increased? 

The chart below shows the average number of sexual partners a person has had in their lifetime since they were 18 years old. You can see that there's a little bit of trending but on the whole, the average number of sexual partners has NOT gone up since 1990 (unfortunately, there wasn't any data before 1990, probably because the question was first introduced then).

When I saw this data, I was surprised that the number of Male Partners is higher than the number of Female Partners. My assumption was that men are more promiscuous than women (isn't that what you'd assume too?). If that were true, then the number of Female Partners should be higher than Male Partners...that's if you assume everyone is Straight though!  So I took a closer look...

If you look at only people who identify as being Straight, you get a chart that looks like the one to the right. And voila! Straight men, on average have over twice as many sexual partners as Straight women!

Interestingly enough, while the number of partners women have has been stable over the past 4 years, the average number of sexual partners straight men have is declining by over 20%.

So what does this picture look like for Gays and Lesbians? How many sexual partners do they have? And are there any interesting trends?

Here's where I found an unexpected nugget. For Lesbians, the average number of female partners is definitely trending downwards. In fact, on average, a Lesbian woman has fewer partners than a Straight woman. 

However, when you look at Gay men, something crazy happens. In 2012, the average number of Male Partners increases over 300%, skyrocketing from 7 to 27 partners!! Your average Gay man in 2012 has 4 times as many Male Partners compared to Straight men (and Female Partners).  

If this isn't errant data or incorrect pivot table work on my part, what could attribute to this finding? Maybe there was a lot of "celebration" as same sex marriage laws got passed!

* The dataset was limited to people Ages 25-50. For analysis on number of sexual partners, people claiming over 100 partners were eliminated as outliers.

StatWing Finding #5: Email/Internet & Socializing

(Data source: https://export.statwing.com/p0/datasets/dat_c5PMCMjP3nSEEHLK9fUVIIgvtdgWgzHV)

Has Email and Internet made us less social? Why spend an evening with your neighbors if you can mass email everyone you know from the comforts of your couch? There are plenty of stereotypes that would suggest the more time you spend in front of a computer, the less likely you are to spend time with real people.

As it turns out, this one is too close to call. The graphs below look at the average number of hours spent either emailing or using the Internet and how it relates to how often you spend an evening out with your neighbors.

Here we see in the year 2000, you could maybe make an argument that people who spent more time emailing were less likely to hang out with a neighbor. But by 2012, it's clear that's not the case and in fact, people who go out with their neighbors spend even more time emailing than people who never go out with their neighbors.

The impact of Internet use is even harder to correlate to how often someone hangs out with their neighbors.

The only definite conclusion is that over the past 10+ years, the rise of the tech industry, the pervasiveness of computing devices (smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc.) and availability of the Internet (free hot spots, 4G networks, etc.) has resulted in us spending nearly twice as much time Emailing and using the Internet.  

StatWing Finding #4: Marriage & Life Excitement

(Data source: https://export.statwing.com/p0/datasets/dat_c5PMCMjP3nSEEHLK9fUVIIgvtdgWgzHV)

Does getting married mean the end of your exciting single life? Does the thought of settling down mean your life becomes dull, routine and predictable?  According to the data above, no!  There isn't a significant difference between people who are married versus people who have never been married when it comes to how they think of life - dull, routine or exciting. 

On a side note, a surprising finding is that men tend to think life is less routine and more exciting than women in general.  

StatWing Finding #3: Money & Happiness

(Data source: https://export.statwing.com/p0/datasets/dat_c5PMCMjP3nSEEHLK9fUVIIgvtdgWgzHV)

Does money buy happiness? If you believe the old adage, you'd say no. According to the data above, it does! People with more money tend to consider themselves as either "pretty happy" or "very happy". It's interesting that in the top-most income bracket, more people are only "pretty happy" and not "very happy". Ah...the woes of the super rich.

StatWing Finding #2: Age & Cynicism

(Data source: https://export.statwing.com/p0/datasets/dat_c5PMCMjP3nSEEHLK9fUVIIgvtdgWgzHV)

As we grow older and wiser, do we lose faith in our fellow man? What effect does a lifetime of experience have on how we see others?  According to the data above, it looks like the older you are, the more likely you are to believe that people are generally fair and won't take advantage of you, are helpful instead of only looking out for themselves and that they can be trusted. Score for humankind!

StatWing Finding #1: Education & Suicide

(Data source: https://export.statwing.com/p0/datasets/dat_c5PMCMjP3nSEEHLK9fUVIIgvtdgWgzHV)

There's a clear trend that shows the higher the degree you've received, the more likely you are to think that it's OK to commit suicide. 

According to the same dataset, it's true (and not surprising) that the higher degree you have, the higher your personal income. I assumed people with more wealth (and resources) would feel there are ways to overcome disease, bankruptcy, etc. other than suicide and thus find it less acceptable.

As we have learned from "The Princess Bride"... "in studying, you must have learned that man is mortal".