Bulgarians do it 151 times a year. Belgians do it 136 times a year. Even Hong Kongers manage it 103 times a year. If you believe the breathless surveys on rates of intercourse around the world, just about everyone's doing it all the time.
If you're not at it 127 times a year you should start worrying because, according to the Durex global sex survey, the biggest and only worldwide study of its kind, you're below average for a sexually active couple.
And if you're doing it less than 100 times a year, or around twice a week, the chances are you're a Singaporean where they only manage it 96 times a year and where 28 per cent of the sex-starved populace resort to David Beckham-style text or phone sex.
Feeling inadequate yet? Feel as if there's a global orgy going on that you haven't got an invitation for? Then take comfort, because sex expert Dr. Judith Mackay says people out there are having a lot less sex than the surveys make out.
The truth is that if you're over 40 and still having sex even once in a while, you can count yourself lucky because a lot of people your age aren't getting it at all, according to Dr. Mackay, the Hong Kong-based author of the Penguin Atlas of Human Sexual Behaviour.
Sex surveys are inaccurate for three key reasons, Dr. Mackay argued: Firstly because researchers only question people who are sexually active, secondly because interviewees tend to be in a narrow and highly-sexed age band of between 15 and 40 -- and thirdly because, as Dr. Mackay puts it, "people fib their heads off about sex."
As a result, she said, sex surveys such as those conducted by Durex, while making for good reading, can be "extremely misleading" and even "very destructive" in the effect they have on people.
"According to one of the surveys, people in France in their 80s were having sex all the time," she said. "The surveys are fundamentally flawed in all sorts of ways.
"The reality is that a lot of people don't have sex at all, or if they do have, they have it very infrequently."
Despite what the sex surveys might suggest, Dr. Mackay said more reliable data suggested that in America -- where the Durex survey found people were having sex on average 118 times a year -- a third of people were not having sex once a year.
"Forty six percent of women in the US think a good night's sleep is better than sex and 15 percent of adults are having half of the sex in the US," she said.
"People read all these statistics about sex and think they are or may be inadequate. It is very destructive. People start thinking they are not getting enough sex."
Dr. Mackay's insistence that the statistics about sex produced in surveys is wrong is based partly on her own work as a doctor at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, where she would on occasions have to tell patients to avoid sex after surgery or treatments.
"I would say to them not to have sex for the next six weeks and without exception, people would be absolutely fine about it. It wasn't even an issue. Most of that was a quite genuine reaction."
Dr. Mackay said she had been to sexology conferences around the world where the argument was forcibly put forward that people's lives were not complete if they were not having regular sex.
"I disagree with that emphasis and the idea that if you are not having sex regularly it isn't good for your health as you grow old," she said. "I think it is up to people themselves. If they are settled into extreme comfort in a marriage that doesn't involve sex, so be it. It won't affect the marriage.
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