Does Rising National Income Reduce Physical Inactivity, or Does the Prosperity Paradox Persist? A Panel Data Analysis

This paper examines the relationship between national income and physical inactivity across nine countries at varying stages of economic development using a panel dataset spanning four time periods from 2001 to 2022. Drawing on age-standardized physical inactivity estimates from the World Health Organization and GDP per capita data from the World Bank world development indicators, three regression models are estimated: a pooled ordinary least squares model, a random effect model, and a two-way fixed-effects panel model incorporating country and year fixed effects. OLS was included to set a baseline on what to expect, while the panel models were intended to be the main findings and bulk of the paper. The fixed-effects specification controls for time-invariant country-level heterogeneity, including cultural norms, climate, and geographic factors, as well as global temporal trends common to all countries. Results from both models yield a positive and statistically significant coefficient on the natural log of GDP per capita, indicating that higher national income is associated with greater prevalence of physical inactivity, a finding consistent with the prosperity paradox documented in prior literature. This relationship persists after controlling for urbanization rate, mean years of schooling, and the Gini coefficient, suggesting that income growth alone does not explain cross-national variation in activity levels. These findings carry implications for public health policy in middle- and highincome countries, where economic development may accelerate sedentary occupational and transport behavior without corresponding increases in leisure-time physical activity. Limitations include the small country sample, reliance on self-reported activity data, and the ecological nature of the analysis, which precludes individual-level causal inference.