Work

The changing returns to physical exercise in China (2010–2023): a nine-wave repeated cross-sectional study

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Background: Since 2008, when China began to implement its strategy of building a sports power, the institutional context of physical exercise has changed substantially. Yet the temporal dynamics of the socioeconomic correlates of exercise remain underexplored. Objectives: To examine whether and how physical exercise participation and its associations with income, self-rated health, and social trust changed over the 2010-2023 study period. Methods: = 78,467), we estimate annual marginal effects of exercise through ordinary least squares regression with exercise-by-year interactions. Three policy periods corresponding to phases of the Sports Power strategy are compared. Results: Exercise participation rose from 31.68% in 2010 to 51.26% in 2023. The exercise-income association increased from 0.301 (Period 1, 2010-2012) to 0.367 (Period 3, 2018-2023, +21.9%), although formal cross-period tests did not reach statistical significance; the upward trend is therefore only weakly consistent with Hypothesis 1. The exercise-health association was negative and appeared to deepen across periods, but the cross-period differences lost statistical significance once the non-comparable 2011 wave was excluded, so this apparent change is interpreted cautiously. The exercise-trust association moved from a non-significant -0.013 to -0.101 (SE = 0.014). Subgroup analyses showed larger income associations for men than women (0.420 versus 0.279) and for rural than urban residents (0.449 versus 0.180). Conclusion: Exercise participation rose markedly over the study period, and the exercise-trust association turned increasingly negative, but the exercise-income association did not strengthen to a statistically significant degree, and the health-selection pattern was sensitive to the exclusion of the 2011 wave. The observed changes are read as population-level associations rather than causal effects of the Sports Power strategy.

Source: Frontiers in Psychology

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1912354

Authors: Lamei Deng, Zhicheng Wang, Wei Liu, Chenyong Wei

Institutions: Hangzhou Medical College, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Anhui Professional & Technical Institute Of Athletics

Language: English

Topic: Physical Activity and Health

Subfield: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

Field: Medicine

Domain: Health Sciences

SDGs: Good health and well-being, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,801