Disability, Life Satisfaction and Participation in Sports

Abstract

Despite the positive externalities associated with the participation in sports that individuals can obtain, there is a lack of studies analysing the impact of this participation on life satisfaction of people without disabilities in general, and of people with disabilities in particular. In this study, we analyse the effects of taking part in active sports and its intensity (i.e., never, seldom, monthly, and daily/weekly) on life satisfaction. Particularly, we are interested in testing two different hypotheses: (a) participation in sports increases individuals’ life satisfaction, and (b) the effects of this participation on life satisfaction are different for people without and with disabilities, being greater for this latter group. One of the main advantages of this study is that we have used longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (for the period 1984–2011) for a large sample of individuals (with disabilities or not) aged 16 or over. To estimate the life satisfaction equation we have run the model proposed by Van Praag et al. (J Econ Behav Org 51:29–49, 2003) called “Probit Adapted OLS (POLS)”, which allows us to identify the factors affecting life satisfaction reported by people without and with disabilities, taking into account unobserved heterogeneity, and using simple OLS-techniques without any loss of information. Although people with disabilities are less likely to take part in active sports than their counterparts, the results show that they obtain higher levels of life satisfaction than non-disabled people from their participation in sports, especially when this participation is more intense. For example, the life satisfaction premium obtained by individuals with disabilities from their participation in sports “daily/weekly” is almost double that reported by people without disabilities as compared to the reference person. This premium could be explained by the greater difficulties and constraints that people with disabilities face when they demand for sport activities. Policy makers and the sport industry must promote and facilitate full access and participation of people with disabilities in sports by eliminating all barriers, understanding their differential needs and providing an inclusive leisure environment.