It’s been deemed one of the 10 leading risk factors for death, but it turns out that physical inactivity also comes with a hefty tab — $67.5 billion, to be exact.
The first study quantifying the global costs of sloth was published Thursday in the scientific journal The Lancet, finding what researchers labeled a conservative estimate of the economic burden caused by inactivity.
More than 40 percent of that total, $27.8 billion, is attributed to the U.S., illustrating a gap between high- and low-income countries. Lower- and middle-income countries shared 75 percent of the disease burden but less than 20 percent of the economic burden, said Melody Ding, lead author of the study and a senior research fellow at the University of Sydney’s school of public health.
“The most striking finding is not the actual number, it’s the distribution of the economic burden across regions,” Ding said. “In wealthy countries, people pay with their pockets. In less wealthy countries, they’re paying with their lives.”
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