THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND SPORTS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A CASE STUDY OF PAKISTAN
Keywords:
GDP, Sports participation, Developing countries, Performance indicatorsAbstract
The economic conditions and sports participation in developed countries has been studied extensively. For a number of countries in the developed world, it has been reported that economic conditions have a direct impact on participation and performance in various sports (Black et al., 2002). However, there has been no significant study conducted to assess the effects of economic conditions on sports participation in the developing world. The aim of this study was to fill that void and ascertain the impact of economic conditions on high performance sports in Pakistan, and the underlying reasons for the decline of sports in the country.
Pakistan's participation & performance at the Asian games have been used as a basis for the study. Moreover, studies that have assessed the teaching of physical education in Pakistan have also been reviewed to identify issues with sports participation (Sarwar et al., 2010). Decline of sports participation of children in Secondary Schools, utilization of Sports Funds & availability of Sports Facilities was also considered to identify reasons for decline in performance. Data relating to available resources such as physical education teachers employed and utilization of funds for sports was taken from National Sports Policy of Pakistan 2005, and used to test and validate various hypotheses under consideration.
The results show significant decline in the performance of Pakistan at the Asian games from 1950 to 2000 (p <0.05) along with negative relationship with economic conditions of Pakistan. It was noted that only 48 % schools had access to physical education teachers. Out of these schools it was found that 40% schools were not utilizing the funds fully, for physical education and 50% school did not have facilities for indoor / outdoor games / sports. The analysis of economic conditions in Pakistan and participation in sports showed that there was no significant relationship between the economic conditions and performance in sports. These results suggest that in order to stem the decline in sports performance, focus should be on grass roots level activities in schools, implementation of systematic and scientific coaching, long term planning and upgrading our competition and monitoring system in addition to provisioning of sports facilities at all levels.Â
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