The study conducted at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and also a part of the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, found a majority of senior citizens were sexually active.

"Older people can and should have very active sex lives, and the idea that they don't is a societal misconception. The need for intimacy and contact with another person doesn't change with age," the New York Daily News quoted Dr. Dennis Lin, director of the psychosexual medicine program at Beth Israel Medical Center, as saying.

Boffins further discovered that older men were more likely to have sex and were more open to it than older women.

University of Chicago associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology Stacy Tessler Lindau, who worked on the research, explained: "Women tend to outlive marriage. Men tend to live with their spouse until they die. So there are fewer older men around to choose as sexual partners."

JB Berns, author of "Do It or Age Quickly", added: "There's no reason a man or a woman can't have sex regularly into their 80s."