Speakers
Description
Sport is considered to be beneficial for both the individual and for society. Although these advantages are highlighted during COVID, the restrictions due to COVID forced people to look for alternatives to continue their sport participation during COVID. Despite the fact that the COVID-restrictions apply to everyone, some people may be affected disproportionately by the restrictions. We aimed to study whether COVID impacted the sport participation of low educated and individuals with financial problems disproportionately.
We assumed low educated and people with financial problems to have relatively little resources (e.g. knowledge, contacts and money) to adapt to the COVID-procedures. Subsequently, low educated people and individuals with financial problems were expected to be more likely to decrease their level of weekly sport participation or completely quit participating in sport during COVID.
Using high-quality data from the representative Dutch panel of Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) we have compared an individual’s level of weekly sport participation before and during the COVID-pandemic. Our findings suggest that the level of weekly sport participation of low educated people and individuals with financial problems decreased most strongly during the COVID-pandemic. This implies that the COVID-pandemic caused increasing educational and financial inequality in sport participation.
With these results our study contributes to the body of knowledge on the broader societal impact of COVID on issues of social exclusion. It thus may inform policymakers to critically assess and intensify sport promotion policies directed at vulnerable groups in society.
