Men more likely to be sexually active in middle and old age
Men more likely to be sexually active in middle and old age
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By Chris Cousens. |  |
Wednesday, 10, Mar 2010 12:01
By Lewis Bazley.
A new study has found that men have a longer "sexually active life expectancy" than women, with the difference widening in old age.
Research carried out at the University of Chicago, and published on bmj.com, found that at the age of 30, men have a sexually active life expectancy of nearly 35 years, compared to almost 31 years for women.
The difference widens from 15 years for men to ten years for women when both sexes reach 55, though researchers stressed the difference between genders was diminished for people with a spouse or intimate partner.
Study authors Stacy Tessler Lindau and Natalia Gavrilova surveyed a group of more than 3,000 men and women between the ages of 25 and 74 and another group of over 3,000 men and women between 57 and 85 years of age.
The research found that people in good health are almost twice as likely to be interested in sex while the results also revealed that men are more likely to be sexually active and be interested in sex than women.
The difference between the sexes was its widest between the ages of 75 and 85, with almost four out of ten (40 per cent) males saying they were sexually active compared to less than two out of ten (17 per cent) women.
The authors concluded that "sexually active life expectancy estimation is a new life expectancy tool than can be used for projecting public health and patient needs in the arena of sexual health".
"Projecting the population patterns of later life sexual activity is useful for anticipating need for public health resources, expertise and medical services," they added.