Large-scale physical activity data reveal worldwide activity inequality

Abstract

Understanding the basic principles that govern physical activity is needed to curb the global pandemic of physical inactivity ^{1– 7} and the 5.3 million deaths per year associated with in-activity ² . Our knowledge, however, remains limited owing to the lack of large-scale measurements of physical activity patterns across free-living populations worldwide ^{1, 6} . Here, we leverage the wide usage of smartphones with built-in accelerometry to measure physical activity at planetary scale. We study a dataset consisting of 68 million days of physical activity for 717,527 people, giving us a window into activity in 111 countries across the globe. We find inequality in how activity is distributed within countries and that this inequality is a better predictor of obesity prevalence in the population than average activity volume. Reduced activity in females contributes to a large portion of the observed activity inequality. Aspects of the built environment, such as the walkability of a city, were associated with less gender gap in activity and activity inequality. In more walkable cities, activity is greater throughout the day and throughout the week, across age, gender, and body mass index (BMI) groups, with the greatest increases in activity for females. Our findings have implications for global public health policy and urban planning and highlight the role of activity inequality and the built environment for improving physical activity and health.