Relationships between socioeconomic status and sports participants have been reported, but these relationships can differ by gender and age. However, there is no study that examined the relationship between socioeconomic status and sports participation stratified by age-sex among Japanese adults. This study is the cross-sectional study by secondly analysis of the SSF national sports-life survey 2014, 2016 and 2018 conducted by the Sasakawa sports foundation. Sports participation was defined as more than once/week (≥52 times/year). The socioeconomic status’ variables were household income, educational status and occupation. Poisson regression analysis was conducted using sports participation as the objective variable, socioeconomic status as the explanatory variable, and potential confounder (age, city size, number of households, body mass index) and the others socioeconomic status as the adjustment variable. In this study, 7,608 Japanese adults (3,772 men, 3,836 women) were included in the analysis. In all age group of men, there was sports participation was significantly less in junior high school & high school in educational status (e.g., the adjusted prevalence ratio of 0.83 [95% CI 0.73, 0.94] for 20-39 years men). In 65+ years men and 65+ years women, there was significantly more sports participation in others (housewife/husband etc.) (e.g., 1.33 [1.17, 1.53] for 65+years men) in occupational status. In women, the relationship between socioeconomic status and sports participant differed by age group. In 20-39years women, there was a significant association between occupation and sports participants. In 40-64years women, household income and educational status significantly associated with sports participation. This study revealed that there are age-sex differences in the relationship between socioeconomic status and sports practice. In the future research, it is necessary to reveal the mediator of relation socioeconomic status with sport participant.
