Originally printed in the Harvard Medical Newsletter, June 2011
Sexuality is not just for the young. Results from a University of Chicago survey published in 2007 suggested that over half of Americans remain sexually active well into their 70s. That said, sexual activity does subside with age. Biological factors tug in that direction, as do social arrangements: older people, especially women, often end up single when a spouse or partner dies. But researchers at Indiana University report that 20% to 30% of long-lived Americans are sexually active into their 80s.
Sexual Activity in Older Adults
It wasn’t long ago that older people weren’t included in studies of sexual behavior because they were seen as largely irrelevant to the topic: 59 was the upper age limit of a landmark study of American sexuality conducted in the early 1990s. However, the University of Chicago survey focused exclusively on older adults, including just over 3,000 Americans ages 57 to 85. The results lent some legitimacy to the subject of sexuality of older people. Here are some of the main points:
Sexual activity tapers off with age. Both surveys show a decline in sexual activity with age, although the drop-off isn’t as steep as one might expect, and a significant minority (especially men) defies the trend. In the Indiana study, 35% of the men ages 80 and older reported that they had intercourse a few times or more in the past year. In the University of Chicago study, 38.5% of the men ages 75 to 85 reported having sexual activity with a partner in the previous year.
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