Are rural elderly people less physical active than those living in urban areas
The aim of this study was to compare and examine the functional status between urban and rural community-dwelling elderly people. Four hundred ninty five subjects (mean age: 67.84±6.56 years, body height: 170.27±10.07 cm ; body weight: 75.31±13.16 kg) were included in this study, 168 were from rural area (34%) and 327 from urban area (66%). To determine the trend of changes of anthropometric parameters and physical fitness in people aged over 60, we used Senior Fitness Test (SFT) and basic morphological parameters. There was statistically significant difference (p<0.05) between subjects of urban (-6.96±10.02 cm) and rural (-11.55±10.49 cm) area in parameters of flexibility. Respondents are most different in terms of strength in upper extremities. Better results were observed in rural subjects then in urban (16.32±6.57 vs. 15.21±5.29 repetitions). From the demographic data, we were able to see that the composition of the urban and rural population is not much different.