Does the COVID-pandemic affect the educational and financial inequality in weekly sport participation in the Netherlands?

This paper explores the impact of the COVID-pandemic on educational and financial inequality in level of weekly sport participation in the Netherlands. Restrictions due to the COVID-pandemic resulted in several barriers for people to continue sport participation. Lower educated people and individuals with financial problems are expected to have relatively few resources to adapt to the COVID restrictions, and therefore, more likely will decrease their level of weekly sport participation. Using high-quality data from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel, we are able to compare individual sport behaviour before and during the COVID-pandemic. Our findings suggest that the level of weekly sport participation of lower educated people and individuals with financial problems decreased more strongly during the COVID-pandemic. This implies that indeed the COVID-pandemic resulted in increasing educational and financial inequality in sport participation. With these results, our study contributes to a body of knowledge on the broader societal impact of COVID on issues of social exclusion. It may also inform policymakers to critically assess and intensify sport promotion policies directed at vulnerable groups in society.

Is Working from Home during COVID-19 Associated with Increased Sports Participation? Contexts of Sports, Sports Location and Socioeconomic Inequality.

Previous research has focused mainly on the association between working from home (WFH) and physical activity, establishing that physical activity diminished among people WFH during the COVID-19 pandemic. In our study, we investigated the association between WFH and specifically sports participation (competitive and non-competitive). We theorized that WFH would offer individuals additional opportunities to practice sports during the pandemic. Governmental restrictions at the time constrained opportunities to participate in organized sports and in sports with others. We, therefore, expected sports participation during the pandemic to be largely restricted to individual participation and participation at home or in the public space. By means of descriptive analyses and adjusted analyses of variance (n = 1506), we found positive associations between WFH and various aspects of sports participation. Lower-educated individuals, in particular, seem to be benefiting from WFH related to their sports participation in the public space, and economically deprived individuals also seem to be benefiting from WFH in regard to their sports participation at home. Our findings extend the literature on physical activity and sports participation among people who worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic while offering implications for policies on WFH, sports opportunities in public space and physical activity-friendly environments.