Do Married Millennials Cheat on Each Other?

Millennials have killed malls, cheese, and bar soap. Their thirst for blood unslaked, they’re now coming for good, old-fashioned cheating.

At least, that’s according to an analysis that the sociologist Nicholas Wolfinger published in 2017 on the Institute for Family Studies website. When asked the survey question “Have you ever had sex with someone other than your husband or wife while you were married?” Americans older than 55 turned out to be more adulterous than people younger than 55. In fact, people born between 1940 and 1959—that is, people currently between 60 and 79 years old—were the ones who reported the highest rates of extramarital sex.

Americans have been asked the infidelity question in every iteration of the General Social Survey, a broad questionnaire about cultural attitudes, since 1991. Wolfinger’s analysis found that in the early 2000s, 18-to-55-year-olds were more likely to have extramarital affairs than older people were. But right around 2004, the lines cross, and younger people became more chaste than their parents:

Wolfinger takes these data to) with each other until they die. “Barring any unforeseen developments,” “we should anticipate a future of more monogamous marriage.”