Sex and substitutes

Are goods complements or substitutes? This is a standard question in economics. And thanks to this survey, we can answer it for sex; is impersonating a politician a substitute or complement for sex with another person?
In theory it could be either. If we're not getting enough, we might take matters into our own hand - in which case the two are substitutes. But if sex is addictive, the two might be complements; more sex leads to more self-pleasuring.
Alas, the data is ambiguous. If we exclude Nigeria, where they get lots of sex and masturbate a little, the correlation between getting as much sex as you'd like and masturbating weekly is an insignificant minus 0.07. For example, only 14% of Japanese get as much sex as they'd like, but the proportion of them who self-pleasure weekly is about the same as do so in Mexico, where 56% get as much as they like.
The British, as you might imagine, score well for sex with Mrs Thumb and her four daughters but not so well for sex with others.
Now, you can quibble with the data. It doesn't distinguish here between men and women. And there might be differences in social norms which make people in some nations more reluctant than in others to own up to doing it with themselves but not reluctant to admit to disappointing sex lives.
These (perhaps important) doubts aside, this correlation implies that the cross-price elasticity of demand for masturbation with respect to sex should be roughly zero. Things that raise the price of sex won't much affect demand for masturbation, or vice versa. So make what you want of this.

Comments

[Matt Munro]

If we exclude Nigeria, where they get lots of sex and masturbate a little,

Hmm. The inverse of my sex life. Maybe I should emmigrate.

[Larry Teabag]

Extraordinary. 70% of Nigerians claim that they've never strangled Kojak. (See page 3 of the survey.)

What a bunch of freaks/liars.

[Fabian Tassano]

I'm hairy. Nigella, are you reading this?