Sub-Saharan Africans satisfied with their sex lives: Study

People in Africa's Sub-Sahara region, a relatively undeveloped area, are satisfied with their sex lives, says a study that also measured the age, sex, education, income, religiosity and relationship status of individuals.

Sub-Saharan Africa contains nearly a billion people, with some of the least developed countries in the world, the researchers said.

"It's a prime area to compare against the highly-developed countries that traditionally have been the subject of sex life satisfaction research," said Stephen Cranney, postdoctoral scholar at Baylor University in Texas, US.

The findings showed that in sub-regions like West Africa and East Africa males were significantly more satisfied with their sex lives than females. In the other sub-regions, men and women were equally satisfied.

Peak sexual satisfaction occurred when people were in their late 20s and 30s.

Neither religiosity nor perceived gravity of the HIV/AIDS problem in the countries were related to sexual satisfaction.

Previous studies have shown that sexual satisfaction is associated with general well-being, and because they provide a comparison for patterns in developed parts of the world, such as Europe and the US.

The study found that sex life satisfaction was not linked to differences in country-level variables, such as a country's overall wealth.

Instead, individual level characteristics, such as having a higher income, more education, and a spouse or "domestic partner" were associated with greater satisfaction, Cranney noted.

In addition, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the level of gender equality in a marriage wasn't related to sexual satisfaction for either the man or the woman, unlike in past research, which showed that couples with traditional roles actually had more sexual satisfaction and frequency.

For the study, the team used data from the World Gallup Poll to examine socio-demographic and other associations with sex life satisfaction across 31 countries and 25,483 people in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2011.

The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Seattle, recently.

--IANS

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