Throughout the developing world more and more adults are less active and as a result less healthy.

Over the last several decades people have generally become more inactive, even in poorer countries. Partly as a result, obesity and other health problems are rising. This essay will explain why this is happening and outline several ways to improve the situation. There are several reasons for this rise. First, there is the modern demand for cars. As people grow richer the first major purchase is typically a car. However, traveling in this way dramatically decreases the amount of time spent walking and cycling. Second, is the growth in television, the Internet, and now online gaming. All of these activities force people to remain still while they enjoy them. They are also fairly addictive, which means that once the youth are exposed to them, they are likely to continue doing them when they are adults. The final cause is urbanization. As an increasingly large proportion of the population lives in cities, it is more difficult for the average person to get sufficient exercise. However, what can be done about this? One way is for societies to demand better urban planning from their governments to encourage urbanites to use cars less and their bodies more. Increasing the number of parks and making it easy to walk to and from work are all good examples of this. A similar strategy could discourage reliance on cars. In other words, people would walk a short distance, take public transport, and then walk the remaining distance. If all of these ideas were implemented, the general population would be more active. Unfortunately, these ideas do not directly deal with the problem of the youth culture obsessed with the Internet. In conclusion, although people have become more sedentary, there are clearly a number of ways to boost the level of activity throughout developing nations. However, it will take a lot of political will and local pressure for them to succeed.