How do you know it doesn’t? (More on that below.)

Only about 14% of men and women aged 30-34 or around 1.3 million people live in “other relatives households” which would apply if they still lived with their older parents. Another 14% live in one-person households. Since the majority of people live in married nuclear families of some kind, it sets up the same conundrum I mentioned in the post – either ALL these unmarried 30-34 years olds are virgins or we have a lot of unconsummated marriages.

(Hair-split) This is what I can’t agree with. If every person that lived with their parents were thrown into the “other relatives households”, then the statistics for the Under 15 population wouldn’t make any sense. The man, 30-34, that lives with only his parents may be classified as “parents with children” if the three of them are all under the same household, or he may be in “one-person households”, if he has decided that he is his own economic unit, regardless of sharing the same abode. I do not think, from looking at the stats, that he would get bucketed in the “other relatives households” just because his folks are old enough to be somebody’s grandparents. But here’s the rub: I don’t see where you’re going to figure how many unmarried men/women between 30 and 34 are not included in “one-person households”. I also don’t see how you can determine which 30 to 34 year-olds are unmarried, because a married man and woman who decide to live separately will have different households, and if they both live by themselves, they are both bucketed in “one-person households”.

If you want to arrive at a chainsaw estimate of heterosexual virgins, aged 30-34, using data sampled by NIPSSR, take the population of people that marry for the first time at an age older than 34. According to 6-4, which is data for 2006, this is 19.0% of men and 10.3% of women. Assuming that these are the folks that NIPSSR got its sex experience sample from, you can then argue the estimate that 24% of those men (4.6%) and 27% of those women (2.8%) of the population are virgins.

The outcome is the same. Her stats are shown to be gase. I’m with Disraeli anyway, in that I think most stats are lies. As for the non-stat part, I guess we’ve quoted some inarticulate parts of an interview with NPR to add to the bruising of her journalistic integrity.

This is probably enough for now, no?

“Ms. KATAYAMA: In Japan, you know, there’s been a long tradition of arrangement marriages. So it’s not necessarily like, you know, you fall in love, and then you get married. That’s not necessarily a progression, and I think when it comes to things like romance and intimacy, like, the people aren’t naturally inclined to act in the ways that we assume now that they should act.”

Percentage of miai kekkon in 1950 – Over 60%
Percentage of miai kekkon in 2005 – 6.2%
http://www.mw-personal.jp/kekkoniyoku.html

MARTIN: How do people feel about this level of commitment to these inanimate objects or characters?

Ms. KATAYAMA: Oh, I mean, I think a lot of the mainstream would think it’s weird or gross, you know, they’re freaks, but it’s becoming more and more accepted, I think. Not necessarily these pillow guys, but this culture of, like, of being really passionate about anime and manga. I mean – and actually in Japan, like, we’ve – you know, every kid grows up watching anime or reading manga.

MARTIN: How common is it to see grown men walking around with these pillows?

Ms. KATAYAMA: To be honest, you’re not going to walk, you know, run into somebody picnicking with their pillow, probably. You know, it’s not something that people usually practice out in the open. The guys in my story happen to be ones who are pretty open about it, obviously, because they were open to be interviewed about it. But most of the time it’s something that people would practice at home, or it’s their own little secret.

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=111365665

at the end the question should be: Katayama invented this story or Japan family restaurants are full of 3D/2D mixed couples?!

I think this point should be important to understand if she is a blogger turned into a journalist wannabe or just a lier…

it’s sad to see BoingBoing posting this story without any comment from bloggers like Doctorow…