Unfit Georgia

The FINANCIAL — Georgians are less fit than their neighbors when we use the ease of walking and climbing stairs as a measure.

Georgian Opinion Research Business International recently participated in a poll aimed at understanding the health attitudes and practices of people living in transitional countries.   By several different measures, Georgians are considered among the least physically healthy polled, second only to Azerbaijan.  In terms of mental well-being, Georgians were by far the least happy. 

The Health in Times of Transition study consisted of polling 16,200 respondents across 8 countries.  There were several different topics covered, including general self-assessment questions on the respondent’s fitness and happiness. We asked all of our respondents how easily they could walk 1 kilometer, and how easily they could walk uphill or up 2-3 flights of stairs.  Georgians were the least likely to say that walking was easy, and also had more difficulty walking uphill than others.  Belarusians, on the other hand, were the most able to tackle these physical tasks.

Fitness of the Elderly — In terms of physical health, the youth of Georgia are indiscernible from their neighbors.  Most every respondent between 18 and 25 years old had no problem walking one kilometer, regardless of country.   We see this unhealthiness begin as early as 26-35 years old, though. While 95% of Georgia’s youngest cohort expressed their ease of walking, 8% fewer 26-35 year olds admitted the same, and less in each successive category. 

Azeris similarly claim less physical fitness than their peers. Despite the total percentage of “healthy” respondents being higher in Azerbaijan than in Georgia, Azeris can be considered far less healthy than Georgians.  Looking closely at the data, we see that Azeris, beginning with the age group 36-45, are actually the least able to walk a kilometer, bottoming out at 13% of their elderly. 

The reason the total number is deceptive is that Azerbaijan is a much more youthful nation than Georgia; the median age in was 39.1 in Georgia in 2011, and a strikingly lower 28.2 in Azerbaijan (2009).  This much larger proportion of youth weights the data heavily.  As was previously mentioned, the youth of every nation in this poll are similar; it is only when we control for age that we see Azeris are less healthy.

Self-Assessments — It is important to note that every measure of health in this poll, both physical and mental, is self-assessment.  The study included no anthropometrics or physical evaluations, so we must take respondents on their words.  When this is the case, small differences in culture or situation can manifest themselves in the aggregate data.   Perhaps the Belarusians are not much healthier than others, rather they have a social inclination to present a healthier image.

As a way to discuss this possibility, we can look at some other questions aimed at judging the mental health of a population.  You might imagine that those people who underreported their fitness would also underreport their mental well-being.  We’ll look at a couple of mental health questions to see the relationship.

The most basic question we asked was “Taking all things together, how would you say things are these days?”  Given a scale of 1-10, Georgians chose a mean “satisfaction” rating of 4.5.  This number is by far the lowest; the next highest mean is 5.7 in Ukraine.  Respondents were also asked if they ever felt that “life is too complicated.”  Here again, more Georgians agreed than any other population.

However, this relationship does not carry through the rest of the data.  Using these two measures, Kazakhstan could be considered the most mentally healthy country.  They have the highest mean satisfaction rate, and were the least likely to think that life is too complicated.  However, their rosy disposition doesn’t seem to greatly affect their fitness self-assessment; a near perfectly average number of Kazakhs in each age group claimed ease of exercise when compared to the rest of the sample. 

Azeris, who we discussed as even unhealthier than Georgians, display much better mental health.

Belarusians, the healthiest of the bunch, are not the most satisfied or the least likely to stress over how complicated life is.  This is not exactly definitive disproof, but it may help us to believe that the Georgians are indeed less healthy than their neighbors, and not just underestimating their abilities.
Studies of this sort have a margin of error of around 3% with a 95% confidence interval.