Sleep and Income

By Alex Tabarrok on Science

Sleepers awake

There’s more to a good night’s rest than going to bed early. Sleeping comes easiest and lasts longest for the wealthy, white, and female. Reporting her findings in the June 1 American Journal of Epidemiology, health-studies associate professor Diane Lauderdale, AM‘78, AM’81, followed the sleep habits of 669 Americans aged 35 to 50 and found that those with a yearly income of less than $16,000 spend longer in bed than those making $100,000 or more, but they sleep less because their “sleep latency,” the amount of time spent lying in bed awake, stretches to nearly an hour.

Using both self-kept sleep logs and wrist-activity monitors, Lauderdale also discovered that people sleep less than they realize: although participants reported averaging nearly seven hours per night, measured sleep was only about six.

According to a recent paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology the rich are more efficient sleepers. Not that they sleep fewer hours, in fact they sleep more than the poor, but their sleep latency, the time spent lying in bed trying to get to sleep is lower than for the poor.

Graphic from University of Chicago Magazine.