If half of inactive Poles would start doing physical exercise…

41% of households spend any money on sports and physical recreation. Among them the annual spending is on average 1017 PLN. The remaining 59% of households do not spend any money on sports. Only 39% of Poles are physically active in their leisure time*. What would be social benefits of increased physical activity, for example, if a half of so far physically inactive Poles started doing physical exercise? The annual number of heart attacks in Poland would fall by almost 11,000. The number of hospital admissions would decrease by:

• 14% for admissions due to cardiovascular disease,
• 14% for admissions due to diabetes,
• 13% in the case of colorectal cancer,
• 9% in the case of breast cancer,
• 9% in the case of endometrial cancer.

As a project for the Ministry of Sport and Tourism, we evaluated the social benefits of investment in sport in relation to the costs. The results of the study were presented by Iga Magda at the international conference “Financing of the sport from the international funds”, organised by the Ministry, that took place on December 12-13, 2016. We summarise the results in the following infographic (we encourage you to download and distribute it). We also provide other products of the project:

• research and analytical reports (see), and
• the application calculating the benefits of increased physical activity for public health, human capital accumulation and the labour market situation.

*  A physically active person is a person whose weekly physical activity in leisure time is at least 10 MET-hours, which corresponds to 1 h 40 min of cycling a week.