Long-run health effects of sports and exercise in Canada

Nazmi Sari () and Michael Lechner

No 1520, Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract: Even though insufficient participation in physical activity is shown to be one of the major contributors to chronic diseases, and poor health, participation in physical activity still remains to be substantially low in developed countries including Canada. In this paper, we examine the long-run health effects of participation in sports and exercise among inactive Canadian adults. Based on informative Canadian panel data and semiparametric matching estimation, we show that participation in sports and exercise generally improves physical health and mental well-being of individuals. While this effect is statisti¬cally significant and persistent for men, we do not find a similar effect for women. Our results also indicate that positive health effects are only achieved with a level of physical activity that is larger than the current national and international health

Keywords: Physical activity; sports; exercise; subjective health; mental health; treatment effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C23 I12 I18 L83 Z28 Z29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-spo
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Working Paper: Long-Run Health Effects of Sports And Exercise In Canada (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usg:econwp:2015:20

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