An empirical analysis of the demand for sleep: Evidence from the American Time Use Survey
BibTeX
@article{asgeirsdottir2015empirical,
title={An empirical analysis of the demand for sleep: Evidence from the American Time Use Survey},
author={Asgeirsdottir, Tinna Laufey and {\'O}lafsson, Sigur{\dh}ur P{\'a}ll},
journal={Economics \& Human Biology},
volume={19},
pages={265--274},
year={2015},
publisher={Elsevier}
}
Abstract
Using data from the American Time Use Survey, this paper empirically examined the demand for sleep, with special attention to its opportunity cost represented by wages. Variation in the unemployment rate by state was also used to investigate the cyclical nature of sleep duration. We conducted separate estimations for males and females, as well as for those who received a fixed salary and hourly wages. The findings predominantly revealed no relationship between sleep duration and the business cycle. However, an inverse relationship between sleep duration and wages was detected. This is in accordance with sleep duration being an economic choice variable, rather than a predetermined subtraction of the 24-h day. Although the inverse relationship was not significant in all the estimations for salaried subjects, it was consistent and strong for subjects who received hourly wages. For instance, elasticity measures were −.03 for those who received hourly wages and −.003 for those who received a fixed salary.
Notes
In fact, a recent study shows that one additional hour of sleep per night causes wages to increase by 16%, making sleep a key determinant of productivity (Gibson and Shrader, 2014). The authors observe that people living in the same time zones devote different amounts of time to sleep, depending on sunset time. They claim that all else being equal, a worker in the east of a given time zone will go to bed earlier than a worker in the west of that same time zone, due to earlier sunset time. However, as a result of synchronized work schedules, the two workers probably wake up at the same time. Thus, the worker who lives further east enjoys more sleeping hours than does the worker who lives further west, making the former more productive. The authors then use sunset time as an instrument to estimate the causal effect of sleep on wages. To put the Gibson and Shrader (2014) results in perspective, the productivity effect, representing the positive causal effect of an extra hour of sleep on wages, is greater than previously reported for one extra year of schooling (Patrinos and Psacharopoulos, 2002).
Far more interested in this Gibson Schrader paper.
Although it is possible to come up with stories about how sleep changes are the cause of decreased labor-market activity in recessions, or even the recessions themselves, those stories would probably be less convincing to most, than the causal explanation that aggregate economic conditions affect sleep. ?????
What? Isn’t that backwards?