Women may live longer, but men are sexually active until later in life, according to a new survey.
Men of all ages were reported to be more interested in sex (no surprises there) but on average men are still sexually active at 70 with women’s desire starting to wane slightly earlier at 65, researchers from the University of Chicago studying middle-aged and older Americans have found.
“Overall, men were more likely than women to be sexually active, to report a good quality sex life, and to be interested and thinking about sex on a regular basis,” the researchers wrote in the British Medical Journal.
“This disparity, and its implication for health, requires further exploration.”
The survey also found that 55-year-old men who were in good health were twice as interested in sex and could enjoy several more years of sexual activity than their male peers in bad health. The same was true of women in good health but they still lagged behind their male counterparts.
The researchers, Dr Stacy Tessler Lindau and Dr Natalia Gavrilova, examined data from more than 3000 American men and women. They divided the participants into two groups, one including people aged 25 to 74 and the other including people aged 57 to 85. Participants were asked to rate their sex lives and desires on a scale of poor to excellent.
The study found that the disparity between the sexual activity of men and women actually increases with age.
While 30-year-old men can expect 35 years more of sexual activity and 45 years more of life, women of the same age can expect just 31 more years of sexual activity, but 50 more years of life. At 75 years of age and older, 40 percent of men were sexually active compared to just 17 percent of women. However, the researchers conceded that this difference could be down to women living longer than their partners as men and women in relationships reported the same sexual activity.
But there is more bad news for women, among over-75s who were still sexually active, only half the women rated the sex as “good” compared with two thirds of the men.
One theory regarding this is that treatments for male sexual problems have boomed in the last decade whereas for women there have been no such developments.
“Over time, we’ve seen the introduction of really effective treatments for male erectile dysfunction, which is one of the most common problems for men as they get older,” Dr Lindau told LiveScience. “For women we haven’t seen the same.”
