Study on Human Movement Reveals World's Laziest and Most Active Countries
A new global analysis revealed the world's laziest countries. The results were culled from smartphone data of more than 700,000 people in 111 countries as part of the largest ever study on human movement to determine how active people are from different parts of the world.
Hong Kong emerged as the most active country with the highest number of average daily steps of 6,880 or an average of three and a half miles a day. On the other side of the pole is Indonesia, which is at the bottom of the rankings with just 3,513 steps, making it the laziest country.
The average number of daily steps worldwide is 4,961 or two and a half miles, and there are quite a few countries that fall below that line, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Greece and Brazil. On the other hand, countries above that level include U.K., Israel, France, Sweden and China.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The study by Stanford University used the Argus activity monitoring app, an accelerometer that can record steps that are built-in smart phones. "The study is 1,000 times larger than any previous study on human movement," said Scott Delp, bioengineering professor and one of the researchers.
"There have been wonderful health surveys done, but our new study provides data from more countries, many more subjects, and tracks people's activity on an ongoing basis. This opens the door to new ways of doing science at a much larger scale than we have been able to do before," he added.
One observation made about the study is that the average daily steps in each country have no significant impact on the country's obesity. For instance, the U.S. and Mexico have similar average step counts, but there is also a marked inequality in activity and obesity levels.
Still, the study was able to help explain global patterns of obesity and its link with well-designed pedestrian friendly cities. By analyzing data from 69 cities, researchers found that the design of a place has health impacts. Cities that were best designed for walking had a better rate of activity among its citizens.
