Association between childhood socioeconomic position and sports group participation among Japanese older adults: A cross-sectional study from the JAGES 2010 survey

Sports group participation may have greater effects on health outcomes than exercising alone. Unhealthy lifestyles were reported to be specifically associated with lower socioeconomic positions (SEPs), and child poverty and the bipolarization of sports participation are currently major policy concerns in children. However, it remains unclear whether childhood SEP has any long-latency effect on sports group participation among older Japanese. Data were obtained from the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study 2010 project, which used self-report questionnaires to survey individuals aged ≥65 years without disability from 27 municipalities (n = 23,320). According to their answers, respondents were assigned to one of three SEP groups: high, middle, or low. Poisson regression with robust variance and multiple imputations was used to examine the association between childhood SEP and sports group participation. After adjusting for health-related factors, low childhood SEP was negatively associated with sports group participation in men (prevalence ratio [PR] = 0.82, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.74–0.91) and women (PR = 0.88, 95% CI = 0.80–0.97). The PR was greatly attenuated after adjusting for educational attainment in both men (PR = 0.92, 95% CI = 0.83–1.02) and women (PR = 0.98, 95% CI = 0.89–1.08), and the significant association disappeared. Low childhood SEP is thus associated with lower sports group participation among older Japanese, though this may be attenuated by education. These findings suggest that it may be necessary to consider childhood SEP and the importance of education to increase sports group participation at an older age.