Sporting activities and social stratification in the Czech Republic: a temporal perspective

Abstract

Sports have assumed an important role among leisure activities in recent decades. The description of trends in sports participation and their differentiation among social groups are well documented, especially in the context of Western European countries. This paper uses unique datasets obtained from representative surveys of the Czech adult population conducted in 1984, 1991 and 2009 to analyze the relationship between leisure activities and social structure as well as changes to this relationship during the transformation from a socialist to a market economy. Cohort analysis shows significant growth in sports participation throughout the entire observation period, resulting from both generational changes and the general expansion of sports activities within individual cohorts. Furthermore, differentiation in leisure sports participation was strongly determined by social structure, especially as a function of cultural capital. The continuity of this relationship throughout the political and economic changes in Czech society after 1989 suggests that differentiation was associated with cultural distances between social classes, rather than economic or other barriers to sports participation.