Differences in Leisure Time Physical Activity Predictors in Europe

This paper contributes to the literature by showing that discrepancies in leisure time physical activity between transition and non-transition countries are mainly due to lower activity by persons, who are in relationship, are older, reside in rural areas and/or have a lower income. Unlike existing studies our results of logit models show that, controlling for all other variables, females are equally likely (in transition economies) or more likely (in non-transition economies) to be regularly active in their leisure time than males. We believe that the reason for differences in results is omitted variable bias, since papers that find women to be less active do not control for person’s income.