The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

Abstract

The urban poor in developing countries face challenging living environments, which may interfere with good sleep. Using actigraphy to measure sleep objectively, we find that low-income adults in Chennai, India sleep only 5.5 hours per night on average despite spending 8 hours in bed. Their sleep is highly interrupted, with sleep efficiency—sleep per time in bed—comparable to those with disorders such as sleep apnea or insomnia. A randomized three-week treatment providing information, encouragement, and improvements to home sleep environments increased sleep duration by 27 minutes per night by inducing more time in bed. Contrary to expert predictions and a large body of sleep research, increased nighttime sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or well-being, and led to small decreases in labor supply. In contrast, short afternoon naps at the workplace improved an overall index of outcomes by 0.12 standard deviations, with significant increases in productivity, psychological well-being, and cognition, but a decrease in work time.

The role of material deprivations in determining ART adherence: Evidence from a conjoint analysis among HIV-positive adults in Uganda

“…A recent study from India examines the impact of improving sleep conditions among the urban poor in Chennai who disproportionately suffer from severe sleep deprivation due to poverty-related factors such as environmental irritants. When evaluating the impact of different interventions to improve sleep quality, the authors demonstrate that improved sleep (in the form of naps) can alter decision-making (e.g., savings, increase attention to incentives, and reduce present bias) [21]. Evidence has shown that almost half of PLWH in some settings (such as in Ethiopia or Nigeria) report significant sleep disturbances, including difficulty falling asleep, waking up at night, and reduced sleep time [22][23][24].…”

Saving light, losing lives: How daylight saving time impacts deaths from suicide and substance abuse

“…Other research suggests that sleep may be associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviors through its impact on impulsivity and executive functioning. For example, Bessone et al (2021) find that short afternoon naps result in significant increases in productivity, psychological well-being, and cognition. 7 This relationship holds even when changes in sleep are acute.…”

Sleeping giant:A research agenda for politics and chronobiology

“…Some normative scholars argue for a right to sleep (Goldberg-Hiller, 2019). Existing sleep studies in political science rely primarily on self-reports of sleep duration and timing, which may be subject to biases and may miss other sleep behaviors like napping (Bessone et al, 2021;Schokman et al, 2018). Nonetheless, existing studies could be supplemented by a wide variety of other measures of sleep (e.g., sleep diaries, sleep quality, insomnia identity), untapped data sources (e.g., public health data, collaboration with sleep labs, data from sleep trackers, wearables, or social media activity), and the potential for using experiments to disentangle causality (cf.…”

“…Political scientists could contribute to policy deliberations regarding school start times (Troxel & Wolfson, 2017), daylight saving time (Rishi et al, 2020), light pollution (Hölker et al, 2010), blue light from devices that disrupt sleep (Hatori et al, 2017), and labor practices that affect sleep (Grzywacz et al, 2007). Moreover, inadequate sleep is not a problem that is confined to the United States-it is a global problem (Chattu et al, 2019), as are sleep inequalities by socioeconomic status (Bessone et al, 2021).…”

“…Nonetheless, existing studies could be supplemented by a wide variety of other measures of sleep (e.g., sleep diaries, sleep quality, insomnia identity), untapped data sources (e.g., public health data, collaboration with sleep labs, data from sleep trackers, wearables, or social media activity), and the potential for using experiments to disentangle causality (cf. Bessone et al, 2021;Holbein et al, 2019).…”