A Stanford University study based on smartphone data has found that people around the world take approximately 4,961 steps every day.
The finding of the research was published in the U.S. scientific journal "Nature." It studied smartphone data of some 717,527 individuals from 111 countries.
With an average of 6,800 daily steps, people from Hong Kong topped the list. They were followed by the Chinese with 6,189, the Japanese with 6,010, the Spanish with 5,936 and the British with 5,444 steps.
Indonesians are at the bottom of the list with approximately 3,513 steps per day. Turks, on the other hand, fell around the middle, taking around 5,000 steps daily.
Interestingly, however, researchers found that a country's average step count wasn't the best indicator of its obesity rate. Instead, a factor the researchers called "activity inequality," the contrast between the most and least active people in a country, turned out to be more important. A country's level of activity inequality was strongly tied to its obesity rate, the researchers found.
For instance, Sweden has one of the smallest gaps between the most and least active people and also one of the lowest obesity rates. In contrast, the U.S. had a large gap between the most and least active, paired with a relatively high obesity rate.
