Definition

The share of children and teens age 6 to 17 who engaged in less than 4 days of vigorous physical activity in the past week.

The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) interviews the parent or most knowledgeable adult to determine, "During the past week, on how many days did (child) exercise or participate in physical activity for at least 20 minutes that made him/her sweat and breathe hard?"

Data Source

Child Trends analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, National Survey of Children’s Health.

The state-level data used here come from the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH). The NSCH includes information on approximately 50,000 children under age 18, with representative samples for each state. For more information on the NSCH, see http://childhealthdata.org/learn/NSCH

Notes

S - Estimates suppressed when the 95% confidence interval is greater than 20 percentage points or 1.2 times the estimate.

N.A. – Data not available.

Percentages exclude missing data. Weighted percentages were applied to the estimates of those missing to derive overall estimates for the number of children.

Last Updated

2025-04