Do All Activities “Weigh” Equally? How Different Physical Activities Differ as Predictors of Weight

Grace Lordan and Debayan Pakrashi

Risk Analysis, 2015, vol. 35, issue 11, 2069-2086

Abstract: In Britain, it is recommended that, to stay healthy, adults should do 150 minutes of moderate‐intensity physical activity every week. The recommendations provided by the U.K. government, however, remain silent in regard to the type of activity that should be done. Using the annual Health Survey for England we compare how different types of physical activities predict a person's weight. In particular, we consider clinically measured body mass index and waist circumference. We document mean slopes emanating from ordinary least squares regressions with these measures as the dependent variables. We show that individuals who walk at a brisk or fast pace are more likely to have a lower weight when compared to individuals doing other activities. Additionally, we highlight that the association between physical activity and weight is stronger for females and individuals over the age of 50. Our overall conclusions are robust to a number of specifications.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12417

Related works:
Working Paper: Do all activities “weigh” equally?: how different physical activities differ as predictors of weight (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:riskan:v:35:y:2015:i:11:p:2069-2086

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Risk Analysis from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().