According to data from the European Union's Eurostat statistics agency, 18.2 percent of Polish adults did not engage in any physical activity outside work in 2025, the sixth-lowest rate in the bloc and 8.2 percentage points below the EU average, the Polish Economic Institute (PIE) said in its analysis.
"The situation in Poland is also improving; in 2022, the figure was more than 6 percentage points higher," PIE expert Łukasz Baszczak said.
The share of Poles who engaged in physical activity at least once a week was above the EU average in every age group.
Among those aged 16 to 24, only 4.5 percent said they did not engage in any physical activity during the week, the PIE analysis said.
The figure was half the proportion recorded in 2022 and nearly 11 percentage points below the average for young people across the EU.
PIE said the lowest shares of people who did not exercise were recorded in the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland and Denmark. In Denmark, the figure was just 2.8 percent.
Some 16.4 percent of Polish adults engaged in physical activity every day, compared with 14.5 percent of EU residents on average.
Poland was slightly below the EU average in the share of people who exercised several times a week but not every day.
At the same time, the analysis found a clear link between physical activity and income levels in Poland.
Among the lowest-earning Poles, 24.9 percent did not engage in physical activity outside work, compared with 10.4 percent among the highest earners.
More generally, the lower the income group, the higher the share of people who did not engage in physical activity. The gap between the highest- and lowest-earning groups was smaller in Poland than the EU average, where it stood at 20 percentage points.
Baszczak said maintaining good health through regular exercise was also economically important because it helped people remain productive and active in the labour market by reducing illnesses linked to physical inactivity.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that physical inactivity will generate costs of about USD 300 billion globally between 2020 and 2030, according to the PIE analysis.
The analysis also found that most Poles consider themselves to be in good physical condition.
"However, this seems to be an overly optimistic assessment, given that many people engage in physical activity relatively infrequently," Baszczak said.
The Polish Economic Institute is a public economic think tank that compiles reports, analyses and recommendations on key areas of the economy and social life.
(gs)
Source: PAP, pie.net.pl