Money can't buy you love - but it can lead to better sex, scientists say.
A controversial study claims that a woman finds lovemaking more fulfilling if her partner is wealthy.
The finding adds to the evidence that for many females, money, status and success remain a key ingredient in sexual attraction.
Debbie McGee's attraction to the 'millionaire' Paul Daniels was the subject of a joke by spoof chat show host Mrs Merton. But a new study claims that a partner's income can actually influence how much a woman enjoys sex
The link between money and sex, and the apparent sexual attraction of fabulously wealthy men, has been debated since the dawn of civilisation.
It was famously celebrated by the spoof chat show host Mrs Merton, when she asked Debbie McGee 'what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?' and is discussed every time a young female model marries a far older, but richer businessman, pop star or actor.
Often it is assumed that women involved in such relationships do it for the lifestyle - and put up with the sex. But the latest study suggests otherwise.Evolutionary biologists Dr Thomas Pollet and Prof Daniel Nettles, of Newcastle University, used the world's biggest study into lifestyles to look at the link between wealth and enjoyment of sex.
The Chinese Health and Family Life Survey includes information on the sex lives, income, education and other personal details on 5,000 people across China, based on interviews and questionnaires. Among these were 1,534 women with husbands and boyfriends.
Dr Pollet found that 121 of these women reported always having orgasms during sex, 408 said they 'often' had orgasms, 762 'sometimes' had orgasms while 243 had them rarely or never.
The researchers found several factors influenced the women's enjoyment of sex. However, one of the biggest turned out to be the income of their partner.
'We found that increasing partner income had a highly positive effect on women's self-reported frequency of orgasms,' Dr Pollet said in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.
The link between enjoyment of sex and partner's wealth was statistically significant even when they took into account other factors such as age, education, happiness, the length of relationship and health.
The scientists say the findings could be explained by bias in the study - that women who have frequent orgasms tend to overestimate their partner's income, or that women with 'high powered' partners exaggerate how much they enjoy sex.
'While we cannot rule out reporting bias, we note that the interviews took place away from the respondents' home, without their partner present and with the respondents able to input their responses directly into the computer if they so wished,' Dr Pollet said.
It is also possible that women who are highly susceptible to orgasms select partners who are wealthy, he said.
He added: 'The third interpretation is that more desirable mates cause women to experience more orgasms,' he said.
If this is true, a woman's 'capacity for orgasm' could have evolved to help her discriminate between males on the basis of their quality, he added.
The link between enjoyment of sex and wealth has also been found in studies in Germany and America.
Evolutionary biologists argue that every aspect of sex - from courtship to the quality of orgasms - is influenced by millions of years of evolution.
Although many people find the idea that women enjoy sex more with rich partners offensive, some biologists argue that the instinct makes evolutionary sense.
Women have to invest so much time and personal risk into each baby, it is crucial that they get the most successful and healthy partner so they can to improve the chances of their own DNA being passed on.
A man, in contrast, can father hundreds, or even thousands, of babies in a lifetime and so invests less in each child.
That means they do not have to be so choosy about whether their partner is socially successful.
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