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Published on: May 26, 2020
Socioeconomic inequalities in sport participation: pattern per sport and time trends - a repeated cross-sectional
Viviane Richard1, Giovanni Piumatti2, Nick Pullen1
1Unit of Population Epidemiology, Division of Primary Care Medicine, Geneva University Hospitals, Rue Jean-Violette 29, Geneva, 1205, Switzerland.
Background:
Sport participation is an important component of a healthy lifestyle and is known to be more common among privileged individuals. However, few studies examined socio-demographic patterns of participation by type of activity. This study aims at quantifying socio-economic inequalities in sport participation by sport type, and to analyse their trend over 15 years.
Methods:
We used 2005-2019 data from the Bus Santé study, a yearly population-based cross-sectional survey of Geneva adults. Sport participation was defined as reporting at least one sporting activity over the previous week; educational level, household income and occupational position were used as indicators of socio-economic position. Socio-economic inequalities in sport participation, and their trend over time, were examined using the relative and slope indexes of inequality (RII/SII).
Results:
Out of 7769 participants (50.8% women, mean age 46 years old), 60% participated in a sporting activity. Results showed that the higher the socioeconomic circumstances, the higher the sport participation (RII = 1.78; 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 1.64-1.92; SII = 0.33; 95%CI: 0.29-0.37 for education). Relative inequalities varied per sport e.g., 0.68 (95%CI: 0.44-1.07) for football and 4.25 (95%CI: 2.68-6.75) for tennis/badminton for education. Yearly absolute inequalities in sport participation tended to increase between 2005 and 2019 for household income, especially among women and older adults.
Conclusions:
We observed strong socio-economic inequalities in sport participation in Geneva, with different magnitude depending on the sport type. These inequalities seemed to increase over the 2005-2019 period. Our results call for tailored measures to promote the participation of socially disadvantaged populations in sporting activities.
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