15 ms·

The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

230 points by rustoo 6y ago

llamataboot 6y ago
Just imagine what we'll do to the labor supply if we can figure out a way to keep the poors working 24/7 and have them not suffer any ill effects from it!
- codekansas 6y ago
  Read the abstract...
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  Britain’s Factory Laws were created to prevent 8 year olds from working 16 hours per day with only a single break, but weren’t really enforced until automation made child labour obsolete. If we had the technology to force people to work 24/7 but proved to it was detrimental to people’s health, somehow I know deep down that society would just bite the bullet and people would burn the midnight oil for a few more dollars.
  - astrange 6y ago
    It probably wouldn't be a good idea because demand would collapse, and there's no work without customers. This is actually why economics is called the "dismal science", it's not because everyone hates economists, a slave-owner gave it that name because he was mad economists didn't like slavery.
    - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
      Weird... maybe he was also mad at economists because they proved again and again that slavery was more expensive than paying people a wage!
      - tpxl 6y ago
        That sounds counter-intuitive? Have you any literature that backs this up?
        Rompect 6y ago
        Adding to the previous comment, slaves also work much less effectively than employees because slaves have no incentive to try hard, since either way they will stay slaves.
        alfiedotwtf 6y ago
        Pretty much this... incentives matter. But if you’re a slave, what’s your incentive to work harder? As for literature backing this up, Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations talks in detail about slavery in the American colonies. He gives examples where slavery was only viable in the southern states where they grew tobacco. Maybe one of the reasons why the South were so opposed to the end of slavery vs the North where slavery was expensive
    - djbebs 6y ago
      Given the low income/wealth of the people doing the work, that's not a convincing argument. There's a reason why overall income didn't really go down in 2020 (and even increased in some places), and thats because poor people don't actually make that much money, nor do they provide any significant value.
      - astrange 6y ago
        Poor people’s income went up in the US, and the poverty level decreased, because we actually did a proper economic stimulus for once instead of an undersized one like in 2010.
      - aiisjustanif 6y ago
        > because poor people don't actually make that much money, nor do they provide any significant value. I’d love to see this reasoning or study behind this, and the context of “poor people”.
    - fingerlocks 6y ago
      I’m sorry, but is this a joke? It’s well known the “dismal science” came from Malthus’s incorrect prediction of society’s collapse.
      - astrange 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science
- Guthur 6y ago
  This sort of inflammatory mind set is not helpful, and in this case the abstract describes they are actually getting adequate time in bed, just having interrupted sleep. The causes of the interruptions could be manifold but i would hazard a guess that the primary cause would be interruption from young children in small domiciles and lack of could social responsibility within the neighbourhood. I've experienced both having a young family and currently living in relatively low social economic neighbourhood. Just last night I was disrupted by someone deciding to burn something rather noxious at 0100 in the morning.
  - movedx 6y ago
    > This sort of inflammatory mind set is not helpful Although not completely relevant to the topic, it's not outside the realm of possibility for what was stated to become a reality. And it's very much an important idea to explore, because to not do so would help those willing to exploit such "zombie workers" actually go through with it.
    - Guthur 6y ago
      It has been the reality for some sets of society during particularly terrible periods within humanities history. Gulags, concentration camps, work gangs and any other element of human exploitation. For these to work most often one needs to denigrate the peoples concern to the point where they are no longer even perceived as the same level of human. Sure all of that is possible but we wont have useful conversations or strategies if we're constantly elevating every instance of stratified to a slave like scenario. I'm not convinced that there is really any other make up of society. The only way would be for us all to live as isolated self sufficient hermits.
      - movedx 6y ago
        That's why the idea presented - the idea that we can keep people awake 24/7 without negative consequences (or at least not enough of them to warrant alarm) - is so insidious. It doesn't require anyone to subjugate or enslave anyone else. Nor think of them as "sub-human" or try to convince a larger population that their exploitation is warranted. All it takes is for the substance or technology that allows for this 24/7 waking state to become legal and you're done. The moment it's legal, warehouses, factories, the service industry, will start looking for people who can pull 10 hour shifts. If you can't do that then you can't have a job (or you lose an existing one.) Then it goes from 10 to 15 hours. If you can't keep up, perhaps be cause you refuse to "augment" yourself, then you're unable to find work or loose your existing one. This really isn't that far stretched. Do you really think Bezos and his lot wouldn't be willing to invest in technologies that allowed an already underpaid workforce to go from 8 hour shifts to 15, 18 or 24 hours? Of course they would.
schappim 6y ago
Those in the study were low-income adults in Chennai, India who sleep only 5.5 hours per night on average despite spending 8 hours in bed. The key takeaway was: > increased nighttime sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or well-being, and led to small decreases in labor supply. I find the result surprising. When I get under 6 hours I see a clear drop off in performance.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  Good grief. It almost makes me question what information is missing from the abstract since I don't know how one can consistently run on fumes without it affecting cognition, productivity or decision making.
  - llarsson 6y ago
    The insane stress levels from being in their situation also affects cognition. So I am not surprised if merely looking at sleep amounts fails to explain differences.
    - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
      Highly likely this is a confounding factor - and compensating for it is essentially every decent policy for the last 50 years in the West.
      - lanstin 6y ago
        There is also a dynamic systems side to sleep rhythms. Quite likely there are stimuli you can randomly experience that shift your sleep cycle into a chaotic regime and then you need a good knock to the light and activity levels to reset to stability.
  - throwawaysleep 6y ago
    Throwaway as I don't want to admit that I feel permanently cognitively impaired. Anecdotal, but I spent years not sleeping through university and sleeping in airports or on the train. Studied engineering and did a lot of hackathons and events and stuff. I figured out then that I didn't need full cognition or excellent decision making. I needed more hours cranking out work. I spent years sleeping just a few hours and often not sleeping on Saturday at all. I do a lot less of that now as work never has 2AM deadlines but it is as though I am permanently in that 80% functionality state. I never felt that I got out of that state. I have never regained my ability to be detail oriented. I am still reliant on the crutches of spell check and Grammarly and my IDE to make sure I don't do something stupid. I use task lists for every little thing in my day. So it is not that it does not impact cognition (at least in my case), it is that you get used to that impaired state and can't find a way back. Only a year and a half removed from that, so maybe it takes more time, but I still feel heavily optimized for output over quality, even though that is no longer needed. My baseline cognition was already impacted. More sleep just did not repair it.
astatine 6y ago
Looked initially like a ripe candidate for the ignobel prize. But, it seems to distinguish sleep from hours in bed and finds that less sleep than time-in-bed doesn't seem to affect them much. Wonder if the type of work was the reason for their different conclusion - assuming that the poor were involved in more physical labor kind of work while the other studies it mentions were probably not. Edit: adding the link to an article I happened to have open: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organizational-cost-of-insufficient-sleep https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our...
- krisoft 6y ago
  > “finds that less sleep than time-in-bed doesn't seem to affect them much” The abstract of the article doesnt say this. It finds that the intervention managed to increase their average sleep length by 27 minute from 5.5 hours to ~6 hours. Thats still way bellow the recommended length. It also finds that this intervention didn’t improve their work performance. This might be because “less sleep doesnt seem to affect them much”, but it might equally well be that it affects them tremendously and the 27 extra minutes were not enough to help them.
  - astatine 6y ago
    You are right and your explanation is more precise. The fact there was no cognitive or other change due to the 27 extra minutes implies my interpretation. It's possible that the baseline using 5.5 hours of sleep is not the right one to use and 8 hours of sleep might show a positive impact, which the extra 27 minutes is not showing.
Scoundreller 6y ago
Here's the full study pdf: https://economics.mit.edu/files/16994 https://economics.mit.edu/files/16994
- shash 6y ago
  Yes, the full study explains a lot. I don’t think they can come to the conclusion that “increased nighttime sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or well-being” based on the data they’ve shown. 1. Their interventions increased sleep time only by increasing time in bed, not sleep efficiency. In other words, without interventions, if participants were sleeping for 5.5 hours with 8 hours in bed, after their interventions, they slept 6 hours after 8.5 hours in bed. 2. This means that the night sleep they measured post-intervention was still extremely disturbed. I doubt if it was restorative in any way. 3. The nap time at work WAS probably of much higher quality because the environment was much better. 4. A word on the interventions; I cannot figure out why they didn’t give out mosquito nets or repellant given that they correctly identified mosquitoes as a major problem (reported by 70% of participants). The best way of getting a good night’s sleep with mosquitoes around is with nets and the second best is some kind of repellant. 5. I think the real conclusion should be that sleep quality matters. Not just amount of sleep, especially if it’s disturbed. I feel like the conclusions are slightly post facto. As in, they set out to test their interventions and didn’t end up proving them so they switched to nap time.
  - Pyramus 6y ago
    I agree with your assessment that 'more of something bad' is not necessarily better. In addition it should be noted that the study relies on actigraphy, yet the shortcomings of actigraphy are waved away. This doesn't mean we can get good before-after estimates, but they should not be compared to estimates from PSG.
jonesn11 6y ago
No offense, but why was this question even asked? What are the people's needs in the first place? I saw a similar study that suggested the best way to improve mental health and economic consequences among the poor is to *drumroll give them money. Then they will create sustainable interventions that don't require source of money to improve the lives.
- larsrc 6y ago
  Plenty of offense: why are you even asking why they're doing research into ways to improve people's well-being, especially poor people? Yes, giving money helps, I'm all for UBI, but maybe there are other approaches that are cheaper or complement UBI. How about we find out and _improve people's lives_?
- nednar 6y ago
  Could you give people money and allow them to take a nap?
TekMol 6y ago
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 Is it possible to learn that? To me it seems impossible to do a "short nap". Even when I feel low energy, I don't feel like I could just lay down and sleep during the day.
- th0ma5 6y ago
  I was always told to avoid naps, but if you must do like 90 minutes. But in general you ideally want regular good amounts of sleep daily at the same times.
- fendy3002 6y ago
  Seems like different for each person and activities / health. For me it's easier if I was sleep deprived after several nights, and when I've not exercised for long.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > Is it possible to learn that? To me it seems impossible to do a "short nap". Yes. If you have to look after an infant you too may discover how wonderful 12 minutes, or seven, of closing your eyes can be. Did I sleep? Maybe, but I definitely feel better.
- dtjohnnyb 6y ago
  I was in the same boat until I had a baby who was a _terrible_ sleeper during the night. Once I was down to 4-5 hours sleep a night, napping during the day was heaven! Sometimes I'd have had too much coffee or been overstimulated through work or something, I found [these tips from the military](https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-trick-soldiers-use-to-fall-asleep-in-minutes-in-even-most-uncomfortable-situations.html https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-trick-soldiers-use-...) really helpful. Even now, I pretty much only need to relax my jaw and do a few rounds of 4-7-8 breathing and I can have a nap on demand!
- larsrc 6y ago
  Yes. I do 20 minutes of nap most afternoons, and it helps immensely. Though "nap" is a misnomer, I don't actually try to sleep, just sit or lie comfortably with my eyes closed and as few noises and interruptions as possible. A 20 minute timer has taught my body to get ready to work again after exactly 20 minutes. The goal is to let the mind relax for a bit.
jakubp 6y ago
While 27 minutes nighttime sleep didn't affect outcomes, another effect they observed was that afternoon naps DID increase productivity and well being. So it's not that more sleep can't help -- maybe it depends on specific type of work / life situation?
- larsrc 6y ago
  Naps are great. Taking 20 minutes of nap turned my afternoons from distraction zone into my most productive time.
Tenoke 6y ago
The majority of comments seem to have the belief that the need for 8 hours of sleep is truth, and seem to mostly be making up various excuses why the increase in sleep here doesn't show results. As far as I can tell, the 8 hours figure is on pretty shaky grounds and most believe it due to pop-science books like 'Why we sleep' and it could easily be the case that this is just another study showing how exaggerated that claim is.
- bdibs 6y ago
  Between 7 and 9 hours of sleep has been recommended from every sleep research group I can find, long before that book came out. Recent consensus statement: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4434546/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4434546/
  - Pyramus 6y ago
    This estimate is quite robust, e.g. researchers observed how long different hunter-gatherer societies sleep etc. In addition it should be note that it's distributed like a Gaussian distribution, so there will be plenty of people outside this range.
  - Tenoke 6y ago
    Long before that specific book came out. If you look at how they arrived at the recommendation here, a lot of it was based on discussions and voting by 15 experts chosen by the US Department of Health. Actual studies are much less conclusive (see the one we are commenting on for example) and the evidence for 8 hours of sleep is shaky and the difference from 6 to 8 is rarely especially big even when it is supported with anything under 6 and over 8 having negative effect. Check this systematic review (first result of my search[0]) which seems extremely sympathetic to 8 hours, yet the actual results are: >compared with 7 h of sleep per day, a 1-h decrease in sleep duration was associated with 6% increased risk of all-cause mortality and a 1-h increase in sleep duration was associated with a 13% increased risk of all-cause mortality (N = 241 107 adults in 43 articles) So, going from 7 to 8 hours increases risk more than going from 7 to 6! Further >Itani et al. (2017) reported that short sleep duration (<6 or ≤7 h/day) was not significantly associated with the incidence of depression compared with normal sleep duration (N = 16 257 adults in 2 articles) >Lo et al. (2016) reported that extreme sleep durations (both short and long) were associated with cognitive decline compared with the reference sleep of 7 to 8 h/day (N = 97 264 adults in 18 articles) But again it's only at the extremes that there is decline, which seems to be more like 3+ hours less than 8 a day. >Health-related quality of life No systematic review was identified that examined the association between sleep duration and health-related quality of life. etc. If you go through actual studies and systematic reviews it is really hard to make much of a case that 6 hours is much worse (if at all) than 8, yet alone anything more than that. 0. https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1139/apnm-2020-0034 https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1139/apnm-2020-0034
nojs 6y ago
It’s great to see negative results like this, that go against current popular research trends, published. It makes me realise how rare it is to see “we studied this thing and contrary to our predictions saw nothing interesting”. Presumably because of publication bias.
- belly_joe 6y ago
  True, but to be fair a null result is much more interesting (and thus publishable) when it cuts against a large body of prior empirical work or theory. Thinking specifically of Card and Krueger (1994) finding zero impact of the minimum wage on employment
dr_dshiv 6y ago
This is brilliant science. Spending more than 8 hours in bed isnt necessary, but naps are still helpful. With young children 5.5 hours in bed is not abnormal.
yosefjaved1 6y ago
It would be great if we could look at the sample data size, look at its distribution, and type of significance tests used for this study.
legitster 6y ago
I wonder how much of the conventional wisdom on sleep is wrong. I know a lot of people (especially post military) who claim they have essentially trained themselves to live adequately on 5 hours or less a night. But most sleep studies seem focused on short-term changes or average populations. Maybe I'm weird, but I hate sleep. If I had the option to function off of 3-less hours a day, that would be like getting back 45 days worth of my time every year.
- Pyramus 6y ago
  Per design the scientific method can only make claims about large samples or 'averages'. If we assume a claim is normally distributed there will always be folks in the left and right tails which are not average - in fact 32% will lie outside of one standard deviation!
redmeatforchina 6y ago
Earplugs are cheap. Helps you sleep.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  That depends on the whether they produce discomfort, frequency of the noise, whether the wearer has tinnitus, blah blah blah
blunte 6y ago
Perhaps the lack of measurable benefits was because the total sleep was still well under what we believe humans need. Also the period of improvement was merely days. Maybe benefits take longer to begin to show.
- TheTrotters 6y ago
  Right. Suppose someone has been living on 1500 calories per day for a while. If researchers increased his intake to 1700 calories day they may not be able to detect a significant improvement. That doesn't mean undernourishment isn't a problem!
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    This was my instinctual response as well. However I agree with another poster that I am happy to see a "negative" result published.
davidhbolton 6y ago
I'm a 62 year old software developer. My normal sleep is between 4 and 5 hours with occasional 6 hour sleep according to my Fitbit. Anything less than 4 and I feel tired but I'm putting in a full days work with four or more hours sleep. In the past while driving long distances, if I started getting fatigued, pulling over to a Motorway services I could fall asleep for 20 minutes and that freshened me up enough to finish any journey.
- anticensor 6y ago
  Are you a former professional driver?
Ghostt8117 6y ago
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-effects-of-sleep-deprivation https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-preventi... This study used cognition, productivity, decision-making, and well-being as outcomes. It did not discuss the economic effects related to deleterious health from long-term sleep deprivation. Is higher productivity and output from increased time at work and decreased sleep time outweighed by the burden taken on by society from the other effects? I worry that some people will see this research and use it to feel better about making their employees work more hours and exploiting low income labor.
scythe 6y ago
This treats only short-term effects and relies on a small (0.45 hours) self-reported increase in sleep time obtained by just telling people to sleep more. Effects on children are totally absent. It's not sufficient to even reduce interest in improving sleep quality because it doesn't measure most of the effects and the methodology is questionable: did participants accept, e.g., lower-quality meals in order to find more time to sleep? It does show that rich people telling poor people what to do rarely produces any improvement — we've seen that before.
moron4hire 6y ago
They mentioned that sleep efficiency was already poor. They mentioned that the increase in sleep was achieved through increased time in bed, not increased efficiency. Most of the restorative benefits of sleep happen during long stretches of uninterrupted sleep. If the sleep efficiency problem is due to multiple interruptions to the nights sleep, that is a very different thing than people having a hard time getting to sleep, but staying asleep once they are out. If the underlying sleep efficiency issue isn't addressed, it's not really all that surprising that there wasn't a measurable improvement in productivity.
hedora 6y ago
In California, rental apartments are built to a lower standard than condos. In particular, they don’t require noise proofing between units. Noise proofing interior walls costs almost nothing (something like 1% the price of construction), but has a huge impact on quality of life. I’m continually shocked at the systematic discrimination built into California housing.
- polalavik 6y ago
  the standards for noise proofing apply to all construction (condos, townhomes, apartments) https://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/STP/PAGES/STP35976S.htm https://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/STP/PAGES/STP35976S.htm
chiefalchemist 6y ago
Poverty is not simply a financial condition. It is - for lack of a better term coming to mind - a disease; and certainly not a diseaae anyone chooses. In fact, poverty creates tunnel vision. It limits vision. It, in the minds of the impoverished, limits choice. It's complicated. Matt Desmond's "Evicted" was a profound moment for me. Similar to this study on sleep, he highlights how areas of higher eviction rates ultimately destabilize the broader community. That feeds back into the disease and the cycle perpetuates, like a virus. https://www.evictedbook.com/ https://www.evictedbook.com/

230 points by rustoo 6y ago

Just imagine what we'll do to the labor supply if we can figure out a way to keep the poors working 24/7 and have them not suffer any ill effects from it!

codekansas 6y ago
Read the abstract...
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
Britain’s Factory Laws were created to prevent 8 year olds from working 16 hours per day with only a single break, but weren’t really enforced until automation made child labour obsolete. If we had the technology to force people to work 24/7 but proved to it was detrimental to people’s health, somehow I know deep down that society would just bite the bullet and people would burn the midnight oil for a few more dollars.
- astrange 6y ago
  It probably wouldn't be a good idea because demand would collapse, and there's no work without customers. This is actually why economics is called the "dismal science", it's not because everyone hates economists, a slave-owner gave it that name because he was mad economists didn't like slavery.
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    Weird... maybe he was also mad at economists because they proved again and again that slavery was more expensive than paying people a wage!
    - tpxl 6y ago
      That sounds counter-intuitive? Have you any literature that backs this up?
      - Rompect 6y ago
        Adding to the previous comment, slaves also work much less effectively than employees because slaves have no incentive to try hard, since either way they will stay slaves.
        alfiedotwtf 6y ago
        Pretty much this... incentives matter. But if you’re a slave, what’s your incentive to work harder? As for literature backing this up, Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations talks in detail about slavery in the American colonies. He gives examples where slavery was only viable in the southern states where they grew tobacco. Maybe one of the reasons why the South were so opposed to the end of slavery vs the North where slavery was expensive
  - djbebs 6y ago
    Given the low income/wealth of the people doing the work, that's not a convincing argument. There's a reason why overall income didn't really go down in 2020 (and even increased in some places), and thats because poor people don't actually make that much money, nor do they provide any significant value.
    - astrange 6y ago
      Poor people’s income went up in the US, and the poverty level decreased, because we actually did a proper economic stimulus for once instead of an undersized one like in 2010.
    - aiisjustanif 6y ago
      > because poor people don't actually make that much money, nor do they provide any significant value. I’d love to see this reasoning or study behind this, and the context of “poor people”.
  - fingerlocks 6y ago
    I’m sorry, but is this a joke? It’s well known the “dismal science” came from Malthus’s incorrect prediction of society’s collapse.
    - astrange 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science
Guthur 6y ago
This sort of inflammatory mind set is not helpful, and in this case the abstract describes they are actually getting adequate time in bed, just having interrupted sleep. The causes of the interruptions could be manifold but i would hazard a guess that the primary cause would be interruption from young children in small domiciles and lack of could social responsibility within the neighbourhood. I've experienced both having a young family and currently living in relatively low social economic neighbourhood. Just last night I was disrupted by someone deciding to burn something rather noxious at 0100 in the morning.
- movedx 6y ago
  > This sort of inflammatory mind set is not helpful Although not completely relevant to the topic, it's not outside the realm of possibility for what was stated to become a reality. And it's very much an important idea to explore, because to not do so would help those willing to exploit such "zombie workers" actually go through with it.
  - Guthur 6y ago
    It has been the reality for some sets of society during particularly terrible periods within humanities history. Gulags, concentration camps, work gangs and any other element of human exploitation. For these to work most often one needs to denigrate the peoples concern to the point where they are no longer even perceived as the same level of human. Sure all of that is possible but we wont have useful conversations or strategies if we're constantly elevating every instance of stratified to a slave like scenario. I'm not convinced that there is really any other make up of society. The only way would be for us all to live as isolated self sufficient hermits.
    - movedx 6y ago
      That's why the idea presented - the idea that we can keep people awake 24/7 without negative consequences (or at least not enough of them to warrant alarm) - is so insidious. It doesn't require anyone to subjugate or enslave anyone else. Nor think of them as "sub-human" or try to convince a larger population that their exploitation is warranted. All it takes is for the substance or technology that allows for this 24/7 waking state to become legal and you're done. The moment it's legal, warehouses, factories, the service industry, will start looking for people who can pull 10 hour shifts. If you can't do that then you can't have a job (or you lose an existing one.) Then it goes from 10 to 15 hours. If you can't keep up, perhaps be cause you refuse to "augment" yourself, then you're unable to find work or loose your existing one. This really isn't that far stretched. Do you really think Bezos and his lot wouldn't be willing to invest in technologies that allowed an already underpaid workforce to go from 8 hour shifts to 15, 18 or 24 hours? Of course they would.

schappim 6y ago

Those in the study were low-income adults in Chennai, India who sleep only 5.5 hours per night on average despite spending 8 hours in bed. The key takeaway was: > increased nighttime sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or well-being, and led to small decreases in labor supply. I find the result surprising. When I get under 6 hours I see a clear drop off in performance.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Good grief. It almost makes me question what information is missing from the abstract since I don't know how one can consistently run on fumes without it affecting cognition, productivity or decision making.
- llarsson 6y ago
  The insane stress levels from being in their situation also affects cognition. So I am not surprised if merely looking at sleep amounts fails to explain differences.
  - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
    Highly likely this is a confounding factor - and compensating for it is essentially every decent policy for the last 50 years in the West.
    - lanstin 6y ago
      There is also a dynamic systems side to sleep rhythms. Quite likely there are stimuli you can randomly experience that shift your sleep cycle into a chaotic regime and then you need a good knock to the light and activity levels to reset to stability.
- throwawaysleep 6y ago
  Throwaway as I don't want to admit that I feel permanently cognitively impaired. Anecdotal, but I spent years not sleeping through university and sleeping in airports or on the train. Studied engineering and did a lot of hackathons and events and stuff. I figured out then that I didn't need full cognition or excellent decision making. I needed more hours cranking out work. I spent years sleeping just a few hours and often not sleeping on Saturday at all. I do a lot less of that now as work never has 2AM deadlines but it is as though I am permanently in that 80% functionality state. I never felt that I got out of that state. I have never regained my ability to be detail oriented. I am still reliant on the crutches of spell check and Grammarly and my IDE to make sure I don't do something stupid. I use task lists for every little thing in my day. So it is not that it does not impact cognition (at least in my case), it is that you get used to that impaired state and can't find a way back. Only a year and a half removed from that, so maybe it takes more time, but I still feel heavily optimized for output over quality, even though that is no longer needed. My baseline cognition was already impacted. More sleep just did not repair it.

astatine 6y ago

Looked initially like a ripe candidate for the ignobel prize. But, it seems to distinguish sleep from hours in bed and finds that less sleep than time-in-bed doesn't seem to affect them much. Wonder if the type of work was the reason for their different conclusion - assuming that the poor were involved in more physical labor kind of work while the other studies it mentions were probably not. Edit: adding the link to an article I happened to have open: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organizational-cost-of-insufficient-sleep https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our...

krisoft 6y ago
> “finds that less sleep than time-in-bed doesn't seem to affect them much” The abstract of the article doesnt say this. It finds that the intervention managed to increase their average sleep length by 27 minute from 5.5 hours to ~6 hours. Thats still way bellow the recommended length. It also finds that this intervention didn’t improve their work performance. This might be because “less sleep doesnt seem to affect them much”, but it might equally well be that it affects them tremendously and the 27 extra minutes were not enough to help them.
- astatine 6y ago
  You are right and your explanation is more precise. The fact there was no cognitive or other change due to the 27 extra minutes implies my interpretation. It's possible that the baseline using 5.5 hours of sleep is not the right one to use and 8 hours of sleep might show a positive impact, which the extra 27 minutes is not showing.

Scoundreller 6y ago

Here's the full study pdf: https://economics.mit.edu/files/16994 https://economics.mit.edu/files/16994

shash 6y ago
Yes, the full study explains a lot. I don’t think they can come to the conclusion that “increased nighttime sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or well-being” based on the data they’ve shown. 1. Their interventions increased sleep time only by increasing time in bed, not sleep efficiency. In other words, without interventions, if participants were sleeping for 5.5 hours with 8 hours in bed, after their interventions, they slept 6 hours after 8.5 hours in bed. 2. This means that the night sleep they measured post-intervention was still extremely disturbed. I doubt if it was restorative in any way. 3. The nap time at work WAS probably of much higher quality because the environment was much better. 4. A word on the interventions; I cannot figure out why they didn’t give out mosquito nets or repellant given that they correctly identified mosquitoes as a major problem (reported by 70% of participants). The best way of getting a good night’s sleep with mosquitoes around is with nets and the second best is some kind of repellant. 5. I think the real conclusion should be that sleep quality matters. Not just amount of sleep, especially if it’s disturbed. I feel like the conclusions are slightly post facto. As in, they set out to test their interventions and didn’t end up proving them so they switched to nap time.
- Pyramus 6y ago
  I agree with your assessment that 'more of something bad' is not necessarily better. In addition it should be noted that the study relies on actigraphy, yet the shortcomings of actigraphy are waved away. This doesn't mean we can get good before-after estimates, but they should not be compared to estimates from PSG.

jonesn11 6y ago

No offense, but why was this question even asked? What are the people's needs in the first place? I saw a similar study that suggested the best way to improve mental health and economic consequences among the poor is to *drumroll give them money. Then they will create sustainable interventions that don't require source of money to improve the lives.

larsrc 6y ago
Plenty of offense: why are you even asking why they're doing research into ways to improve people's well-being, especially poor people? Yes, giving money helps, I'm all for UBI, but maybe there are other approaches that are cheaper or complement UBI. How about we find out and _improve people's lives_?
nednar 6y ago
Could you give people money and allow them to take a nap?

TekMol 6y ago

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 Is it possible to learn that? To me it seems impossible to do a "short nap". Even when I feel low energy, I don't feel like I could just lay down and sleep during the day.

th0ma5 6y ago
I was always told to avoid naps, but if you must do like 90 minutes. But in general you ideally want regular good amounts of sleep daily at the same times.
fendy3002 6y ago
Seems like different for each person and activities / health. For me it's easier if I was sleep deprived after several nights, and when I've not exercised for long.
barry-cotter 6y ago
> Is it possible to learn that? To me it seems impossible to do a "short nap". Yes. If you have to look after an infant you too may discover how wonderful 12 minutes, or seven, of closing your eyes can be. Did I sleep? Maybe, but I definitely feel better.
dtjohnnyb 6y ago
I was in the same boat until I had a baby who was a _terrible_ sleeper during the night. Once I was down to 4-5 hours sleep a night, napping during the day was heaven! Sometimes I'd have had too much coffee or been overstimulated through work or something, I found [these tips from the military](https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-trick-soldiers-use-to-fall-asleep-in-minutes-in-even-most-uncomfortable-situations.html https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-trick-soldiers-use-...) really helpful. Even now, I pretty much only need to relax my jaw and do a few rounds of 4-7-8 breathing and I can have a nap on demand!
larsrc 6y ago
Yes. I do 20 minutes of nap most afternoons, and it helps immensely. Though "nap" is a misnomer, I don't actually try to sleep, just sit or lie comfortably with my eyes closed and as few noises and interruptions as possible. A 20 minute timer has taught my body to get ready to work again after exactly 20 minutes. The goal is to let the mind relax for a bit.

jakubp 6y ago

While 27 minutes nighttime sleep didn't affect outcomes, another effect they observed was that afternoon naps DID increase productivity and well being. So it's not that more sleep can't help -- maybe it depends on specific type of work / life situation?

larsrc 6y ago
Naps are great. Taking 20 minutes of nap turned my afternoons from distraction zone into my most productive time.

Tenoke 6y ago

The majority of comments seem to have the belief that the need for 8 hours of sleep is truth, and seem to mostly be making up various excuses why the increase in sleep here doesn't show results. As far as I can tell, the 8 hours figure is on pretty shaky grounds and most believe it due to pop-science books like 'Why we sleep' and it could easily be the case that this is just another study showing how exaggerated that claim is.

bdibs 6y ago
Between 7 and 9 hours of sleep has been recommended from every sleep research group I can find, long before that book came out. Recent consensus statement: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4434546/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4434546/
- Pyramus 6y ago
  This estimate is quite robust, e.g. researchers observed how long different hunter-gatherer societies sleep etc. In addition it should be note that it's distributed like a Gaussian distribution, so there will be plenty of people outside this range.
- Tenoke 6y ago
  Long before that specific book came out. If you look at how they arrived at the recommendation here, a lot of it was based on discussions and voting by 15 experts chosen by the US Department of Health. Actual studies are much less conclusive (see the one we are commenting on for example) and the evidence for 8 hours of sleep is shaky and the difference from 6 to 8 is rarely especially big even when it is supported with anything under 6 and over 8 having negative effect. Check this systematic review (first result of my search[0]) which seems extremely sympathetic to 8 hours, yet the actual results are: >compared with 7 h of sleep per day, a 1-h decrease in sleep duration was associated with 6% increased risk of all-cause mortality and a 1-h increase in sleep duration was associated with a 13% increased risk of all-cause mortality (N = 241 107 adults in 43 articles) So, going from 7 to 8 hours increases risk more than going from 7 to 6! Further >Itani et al. (2017) reported that short sleep duration (<6 or ≤7 h/day) was not significantly associated with the incidence of depression compared with normal sleep duration (N = 16 257 adults in 2 articles) >Lo et al. (2016) reported that extreme sleep durations (both short and long) were associated with cognitive decline compared with the reference sleep of 7 to 8 h/day (N = 97 264 adults in 18 articles) But again it's only at the extremes that there is decline, which seems to be more like 3+ hours less than 8 a day. >Health-related quality of life No systematic review was identified that examined the association between sleep duration and health-related quality of life. etc. If you go through actual studies and systematic reviews it is really hard to make much of a case that 6 hours is much worse (if at all) than 8, yet alone anything more than that. 0. https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1139/apnm-2020-0034 https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1139/apnm-2020-0034

nojs 6y ago

It’s great to see negative results like this, that go against current popular research trends, published. It makes me realise how rare it is to see “we studied this thing and contrary to our predictions saw nothing interesting”. Presumably because of publication bias.

belly_joe 6y ago
True, but to be fair a null result is much more interesting (and thus publishable) when it cuts against a large body of prior empirical work or theory. Thinking specifically of Card and Krueger (1994) finding zero impact of the minimum wage on employment

dr_dshiv 6y ago

This is brilliant science. Spending more than 8 hours in bed isnt necessary, but naps are still helpful. With young children 5.5 hours in bed is not abnormal.

yosefjaved1 6y ago

It would be great if we could look at the sample data size, look at its distribution, and type of significance tests used for this study.

legitster 6y ago

I wonder how much of the conventional wisdom on sleep is wrong. I know a lot of people (especially post military) who claim they have essentially trained themselves to live adequately on 5 hours or less a night. But most sleep studies seem focused on short-term changes or average populations. Maybe I'm weird, but I hate sleep. If I had the option to function off of 3-less hours a day, that would be like getting back 45 days worth of my time every year.

Pyramus 6y ago
Per design the scientific method can only make claims about large samples or 'averages'. If we assume a claim is normally distributed there will always be folks in the left and right tails which are not average - in fact 32% will lie outside of one standard deviation!

redmeatforchina 6y ago

Earplugs are cheap. Helps you sleep.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
That depends on the whether they produce discomfort, frequency of the noise, whether the wearer has tinnitus, blah blah blah

blunte 6y ago

Perhaps the lack of measurable benefits was because the total sleep was still well under what we believe humans need. Also the period of improvement was merely days. Maybe benefits take longer to begin to show.

TheTrotters 6y ago
Right. Suppose someone has been living on 1500 calories per day for a while. If researchers increased his intake to 1700 calories day they may not be able to detect a significant improvement. That doesn't mean undernourishment isn't a problem!
- nerdponx 6y ago
  This was my instinctual response as well. However I agree with another poster that I am happy to see a "negative" result published.

davidhbolton 6y ago

I'm a 62 year old software developer. My normal sleep is between 4 and 5 hours with occasional 6 hour sleep according to my Fitbit. Anything less than 4 and I feel tired but I'm putting in a full days work with four or more hours sleep. In the past while driving long distances, if I started getting fatigued, pulling over to a Motorway services I could fall asleep for 20 minutes and that freshened me up enough to finish any journey.

anticensor 6y ago
Are you a former professional driver?

Ghostt8117 6y ago

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-effects-of-sleep-deprivation https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-preventi... This study used cognition, productivity, decision-making, and well-being as outcomes. It did not discuss the economic effects related to deleterious health from long-term sleep deprivation. Is higher productivity and output from increased time at work and decreased sleep time outweighed by the burden taken on by society from the other effects? I worry that some people will see this research and use it to feel better about making their employees work more hours and exploiting low income labor.

scythe 6y ago

This treats only short-term effects and relies on a small (0.45 hours) self-reported increase in sleep time obtained by just telling people to sleep more. Effects on children are totally absent. It's not sufficient to even reduce interest in improving sleep quality because it doesn't measure most of the effects and the methodology is questionable: did participants accept, e.g., lower-quality meals in order to find more time to sleep? It does show that rich people telling poor people what to do rarely produces any improvement — we've seen that before.

moron4hire 6y ago

They mentioned that sleep efficiency was already poor. They mentioned that the increase in sleep was achieved through increased time in bed, not increased efficiency. Most of the restorative benefits of sleep happen during long stretches of uninterrupted sleep. If the sleep efficiency problem is due to multiple interruptions to the nights sleep, that is a very different thing than people having a hard time getting to sleep, but staying asleep once they are out. If the underlying sleep efficiency issue isn't addressed, it's not really all that surprising that there wasn't a measurable improvement in productivity.

hedora 6y ago

In California, rental apartments are built to a lower standard than condos. In particular, they don’t require noise proofing between units. Noise proofing interior walls costs almost nothing (something like 1% the price of construction), but has a huge impact on quality of life. I’m continually shocked at the systematic discrimination built into California housing.

polalavik 6y ago
the standards for noise proofing apply to all construction (condos, townhomes, apartments) https://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/STP/PAGES/STP35976S.htm https://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/STP/PAGES/STP35976S.htm

chiefalchemist 6y ago

Poverty is not simply a financial condition. It is - for lack of a better term coming to mind - a disease; and certainly not a diseaae anyone chooses. In fact, poverty creates tunnel vision. It limits vision. It, in the minds of the impoverished, limits choice. It's complicated. Matt Desmond's "Evicted" was a profound moment for me. Similar to this study on sleep, he highlights how areas of higher eviction rates ultimately destabilize the broader community. That feeds back into the disease and the cycle perpetuates, like a virus. https://www.evictedbook.com/ https://www.evictedbook.com/