Where does New Zealand rank among the laziest countries in the world? It might surprise you.

Scientists at Stanford University analysed over 68 million days of physical activity based on smartphone measurements from nearly 720,000 people across 46 countries.

The study was published in Journal Nature, and all the people involved in the study had their activity monitored on a fitness app and how many steps they took a day were counted.

They found that Hong Kong was the most active country in the world with a score of 22.2 on the activity inequality scale with an average step count of nearly 7,000 a day.

The activity inequality that they were measuring is the difference between the fittest people in a country and the laziest people in that particular country.

New Zealand isn’t as lazy as our mates across the ditch, but we’re not quite the most active either and we came in at 6th on the list with an activity inequality of 31.1.

China placed second on the list (24.5), followed by Sweden (24.6), South Korea (24.7), and the Czech Republic (24.8).

Two sets of neighbouring countries, United States and Canada and New Zealand and Australia both broke the 30 markers but Saudi Arabia was deemed the least active with a score of 32.5.

The full list of countries is below.

The following table and more data are also available here.

Rank	Country	Activity Inequality
1	Hong Kong	22.2
2	China	24.5
3	Sweden	24.6
4	South Korea	24.7
5	Czech Republic	24.8
6	Japan	24.8
7	Singapore	24.9
8	Norway	25.2
9	Ukraine	25.2
10	Netherlands	26.1
11	Spain	26.1
12	Taiwan	26.2
13	Denmark	26.2
14	Russia	26.2
15	Chile	26.3
16	Switzerland	26.3
17	Turkey	26.4
18	Finland	26.6
19	Germany	26.6
20	France	26.8
21	Poland	26.9
22	Brazil	27.2
23	Israel	27.2
24	Thailand	27.2
25	Hungary	27.3
26	Italy	27.5
27	Portugal	27.6
28	Belgium	27.6
29	Mexico	27.9
30	United Arab Emirates	28.1
31	Indonesia	28.3
32	Romania	28.3
33	South Africa	28.4
34	Ireland	28.5
35	Malaysia	28.8
36	United Kingdom	28.8
37	Qatar	29.1
38	India	29.3
39	Greece	29.5
40	Philippines	29.8
41	New Zealand	30.1
42	United States	30.3
43	Egypt	30.3
44	Canada	30.3
45	Australia	30.4
46	Saudi Arabia	32.5