Study finds generational shifts in who plays

A sweeping study of U.S. youth sports participation over the past 60 years has found that there has been a significant increase over time in kids playing organized sports—but particularly among more privileged, educated families.

A national survey found that about 70% of Americans born in the ’90s and reaching age 18 by 2015–16 said they took part in organized sports through recreational, school, or club teams. This finding showed a rather steady increase in organized sports participation across generations. Slightly more than half of those born in the ’50s reported participating in organized youth sports.

But there were also significant generational variations in who took part in organized sports, the study found.

For kids born in the ’50s, there were essentially no class differences in who played organized sports. But for kids born in the ’90s, the share of those who played organized sports grew to be 24 percentage points higher when they had a college-educated parent, compared to not having had a college-educated parent.

“Childhood social class matters when it comes to whether you have the opportunity to participate in organized sports, something which is a relatively recent development,” said Chris Knoester, lead author of the study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. “We found that privileged families seem to be leveraging their advantages to strategically and intentionally invest in organized sports participation. That can give their children big benefits.”

Knoester conducted the study with Chris Bjork, professor of education at Vassar. Their results were published recently in the journal Leisure/Loisir.

A major contribution of the study is providing an in-depth review of how patterns of youth sports participation have changed over the past 60 years, something that hasn’t been done before, Knoester said.

The study used data from the National Sports and Society Survey, conducted in 2018 and 2019 by Ohio State. It included a sample of 3,935 adults from across the country who answered questions about their sports participation as children.

The finding that youth from privileged families are increasingly dominating organized sports speaks to the increased privatization of the youth sports industry, enhanced reliance on parents’ involvement, and huge growth of club sports, according to the researchers.

“There has been a dramatic decrease in public support for extracurricular activities in schools that started in the ’80s, including sports,” Bjork said.

“One result has been the growth of club sports, which can be very expensive, and not all parents are in the position to afford that for their kids.”

The average family paid $883 annually for one child’s primary sport in 2022, according to Project Play by the Aspen Institute.