Q:

Just how common are Betan Hermaphrodites?

In the Vorkosigan series, it is casually mentioned several times in early books that around a hundred years ago, there was a failed social experiment with artificial hermaphrodites. But we still keep seeing plenty of them as of the last book, without comments about the failed experiment. While Betans do have a life expectancy of around 120, given the sheer number of Betan Herms we keep running into, and given the specific statuses allotted (not solely, but commonly) to them as things like sexual therapists and all, it doesn't seem terribly like they were a fad a century ago and not made anymore. If anything, it seems like there was a steady stream of them still being (pardon) pumped out into the universe.
So what's the story here? I assume that Bujold liked the idea of the Herms and changed her mind, but has it ever been addressed that they are still being produced?

A:

Between 1-10% of Betan society according to the author (board membership needed to view post):

For some of the reasons the answering poster mentions below, the population of herms on Beta is not large, but neither is it vanishingly small. Not below 1% nor above 10%, but as I never gave the population of Beta, we don't know how many individuals that comes to.
Ta, L.

