Women Orgasm More With Rich Men, Claim Researchers

By Margaret Hartmann | January 19, 2009 | 2:30pm

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According to a new study, women have more orgasms if their partner is wealthy, which, as the Times of London reports, suggests “woman are inherently programmed to be gold-diggers.” Ugh.

In the new study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, evolutionary biologists from Newcastle University looked at the Chinese Health and Family Life Survey, which includes information on the sex lives, income, and education of 5,000 people across China and based on interviews and questionnaires. Of the 1,534 women in the study who have husbands and boyfriends, researchers found that 121 reported always having orgasms during sex, 408 said they often had orgasms, 762 sometimes had orgasms, and 243 had them rarely or never. Lead researchers Dr. Thomas Pollet and Prof. Daniel Nettles said that though several factors correlated to the number of orgasms a woman reported having during sex, one of the biggest was the income of their partner.

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The British papers reporting this story take it as more evidence that, as the Daily Mail put it, “for many females, money, status and success remain a key ingredient in sexual attraction.” However, the scientists themselves acknowledge that bias could explain their findings, suggesting that women who have frequent orgasms may overestimate their partner’s income, that women with wealthy partners exaggerate how much they enjoy sex, or that women who orgasm easily select partners who are wealthy.

Clearly there are many other factors that call this scientific evidence into question, since scientists did not actually measure the number of orgasms the women had, and factors such as the woman’s income level, or how income may contribute to the stress level of the couple were not discussed in the articles. But since the papers have so many examples of famous rich men with younger, hotter women, such as Hugh Hefner and Donald Trump, this research just proved wrong the assumption that “women involved in such relationships do it for the lifestyle – and put up with the sex,” according to the Daily Mail.

Dr. Pollet says the findings are “consistent with the view that female orgasm has an evolved adaptive function,” and claims that women may orgasm more frequently if their man is rich to indicate that they would be good marriage material, adds The Telegraph. Since the points out that “women can become pregnant whatever their pleasure levels,” and that female orgasm “appears to have no reproductive purpose,” clearly the theory presented in the study that “the female orgasm is an evolutionary adaptation that drives women to choose and retain high-quality partners” makes sense, since a rich man is always a high-quality man.

Many women can probably come up with their own anecdotal examples of “poor” males who are good in bed (though it is much easier for newspapers to find a picture of Hugh Hefner than that starving artist guy you dated in college), and just yesterday, the Telegraph published another piece, this one claiming that wealth does not equal happiness. According to research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, during a recession, life expectancy falls and rates of mental illness increase, and men who use wealth, power, or status to define themselves are particularly at risk. Lasting friendships, marriage, and belief in something bigger than yourself are all proven to have a more positive effect on happiness than the size of a person’s wallet. To sum up: all of this stuff is confusing, contradictory, and most likely utter bullshit.

Wealthy Men Give Women More Orgasms [Times of London]

Women Get More Pleasure In Bed From Wealthy Men [The Telegraph]

Why Rich Men Are Better In Bed: Women Have More Orgasms With Wealthy Partners, Study Finds [The Daily Mail]

Men, Listen Up: Money Does Not Make You Happy [The Telegraph]