Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

academic.oup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 207 posts

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#71

Post by Pyramus »

legitster wrote: post #41

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…

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!

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#72

Post by krisoft »

astatine wrote: post #7

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…

> “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.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#73

Post by sofixa »

artem247 wrote: post #61
rorykoehler wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor people aren't doing brain work but instead do manual labor etc. It definitely should be a core part of any study to highlight this.

In my country poor people are: doctors and nurses who work at state hospitals(most of them), teachers at state schools, university professors(both state and private ones), engineers who work at such government facilities as nuclear plants and the like, scientists in general and also some government officials. All them make roughly 10-20% percent of what moderately skillful software engineer could make, in the same ci…

They probably make more than minimum wage workers at (fast food|restaurants|cleaning|etc) ? So even if they're relatively poor compared to skilled software engineers ( which is usually even more skewed because skilled ones often work for rich foreign companies that can afford a much better salary and still come out cheaper than engineers in their original country), they're still better off than minimum wage, who are the real working poor ( note that in some countries and cities minimum wage can be sufficient and wouldn't put you in the poor category)

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#74

Post by sofixa »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #39
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that a study 'Economic Benefits of Meth use on the Urban Poor' would be looked upon so well by the Ethics Board.

Many countries in the WW2 era sold amphetamine based drugs as antidepressants, for "creating the right attitude", making your wife focus on housework, etc. (and other rather disturbing things). Essentially, drugging workers doing low-skill tasks to make them more cooperative or productive or something. I wonder how much research was done at the time and has been done in retrospect.

And the German Army in WW2 heavily used meth ( pervitin iirc) to keep focused and going on for longer

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#75

Post by AussieWog93 »

davnn wrote: post #69
artem247 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country poor people are: doctors and nurses who work at state hospitals(most of them), teachers at state schools, university professors(both state and private ones), engineers who work at such government facilities as nuclear plants and the like, scientists in general and also some government officials. All them make roughly 10-20% percent of what moderately skillful software engineer could make, in the same ci…

Sounds pretty unrealistic, what country do you live in?

He's arguing they're poorer than the average software engineer, not poorer than a factory worker. I'd put my money on Eastern Europe or South America.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#76

Post by namelosw »

TekMol wrote: post #16

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.

It's easy. In China most people do that at noon, even there's no bed around. People usually take a 20 mins nap at their desks. Preferably after lunch because it's easier to fall asleep because the blood sugar would rise after eating.

Sleep at a desk might not be the most comfortable thing, but it's not bad at all once you're used to it. Or get a small bed around if you can. Sleep masks are surprisingly helpful, too.

Just relax and don't be upset if you cannot fall asleep fast, even if you can't fall asleep you'll find yourself more productive in the afternoon - it's like an implicit meditation. There are also times that people only actually sleep like 5 minutes out of 20, but it usually subjectively feels much longer than '5 minutes' because time feels longer when sleeping and it's very refreshing.

As time goes by it will become a habit and you'll fall asleep fast. The downside is you are likely to feel worse if you have things to do at noon and miss the nap.

IMO the best thing about taking nap at noon is it reduces the fear of sleeping too little at night because you know you can more or less take a nap and get a partial reset at noon.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#77

Post by hutzlibu »

supert56 wrote: post #45
Teknoman117 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries in the WW2 era sold amphetamine based drugs as antidepressants, for "creating the right attitude", making your wife focus on housework, etc. (and other rather disturbing things). Essentially, drugging workers doing low-skill tasks to make them more cooperative or productive or something. I wonder how much research was done at the time and has been done in retrospect.

Sounds a lot like Brave New World

Which was written around that time (even a bit before) ...

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#78

Post by nednar »

TekMol wrote: post #16

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.

It might need some training, but it's possible. Especially when you are very tired from sleeping only 5-6 hours every day, it should be very possible have a very deep sleep even in a 20 minute "nap" (i.e., a real sleep loop that gets broken unhappily after 20 minutes).

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#79

Post by nednar »

namelosw wrote: post #76
TekMol wrote: post #16

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.

It's easy. In China most people do that at noon, even there's no bed around. People usually take a 20 mins nap at their desks. Preferably after lunch because it's easier to fall asleep because the blood sugar would rise after eating. Sleep at a desk might not be the most comfortable thing, but it's not bad at all once you're used to it. Or get a small bed around if you can. Sleep masks are surprisingly helpful, too.…

Why do you associate high blood sugar with more sleep? Could it also be something else, like the cooking oil used with the veggies and meat/tofu?

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#80

Post by dalbasal »

DecayingOrganic wrote: post #62
buu700 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could also be a function of their jobs, which weren't specified in the abstract. While insufficient sleep might cause physical discomfort and contribute to long-term health problems, if their job weren't highly physically or mentally demanding, I suspect that most people could get through the day with negligible detriment to their short-term economic output after having a cup of coffee.

They employed 452 adults for a one-month data-entry job, which the authors say it's "a relatively cognitively-demanding task intended to be sensitive to sleep deprivation." As a side note, the study also says that short afternoon naps increased productivity.

Wow. That should have been in the abstract. 452 adults hired for a one-month job intended to be sensitive to sleep deprivation sounds pretty robust.
Post reply on HN