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The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

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

#111

Post by artem247 »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #75
davnn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To put it into context, no, these people make around the same as factory worker. Work conditions would be much nicer, still. Schoolteachers are considered 'poor' by other Ukrainians (who are not too well-off themselves) compared to other occupations without taking into account SW jobs and anything like that.

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

#112

Post by jonplackett »

andi999 wrote: post #94
jonplackett wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it as then saying they just got them to spend even more time in bed, despite the problem being they already have a lot of non-sleep time in bed. So it just reduced their time available to do other stuff. Am I misunderstanding?

I read the abstract like the managed through information to reduce the non sleeping time in bed. They shd have used a fitness tracker to confirm, relying on the answers of people who might think their income depends on giving the 'right' answers is dangerous.

> increased sleep duration by 27 minutes per night by inducing more time in bed

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

#113

Post by anticensor »

davidhbolton wrote: post #83

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 fini…

Are you a former professional driver?

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

#114

Post by Pyramus »

Tenoke wrote: post #102
bdibs wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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 wi…

This is one of my favourite topics that seems straightforward (What's the optimal sleep length?) but is a lot more tricky.

> 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.

The absence of evidence that 6 is much worse than 8 hours is not evidence that 6 is not much worse than 8 hours. It doesn't matter that much in this case because we already agree that it's worse - the question is how much worse.

Better or worse is measured in averages, on a population level, and here we see exactly the adverse health outcomes you cited (and a lot more that you didn't cite) from [1].

Here is where things get tricky for two reasons:

1) Population studies don't translate into personal health advice - there are plenty of folks striving on 4 hours a night (but they are rare in relative terms).

2) Overly long sleep durations are also associated with adverse health outcomes, and we don't know why! We believe we have a good understanding why short sleep is linked to some health outcomes linked to certain metabolic pathways, e.g. obesity or diabetes. And also we can take one individual, restrict their sleep, and see that their cognitive performance is impaired, and from here, it is reasonable to assume we understand the link between short sleep and accidents and injuries.

For the overly long sleep however, we have no idea (as far as I'm aware of).

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

#115

Post by adflux »

arisAlexis wrote: post #105
nkmnz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my own experience: go get therapy, meditation classes and Ritalin! It wasn’t until I turned 26 and got access to all three that I could finally _learn_ what concentration really was. I went through Highschool without having to study a single day, getting very good grades nevertheless - while being on very little sleep with a total lack of a regular rhythm. College didn’t go so well, but other interests and pursu…

recommending Ritalin to someone that has suffered or still suffers from insomnia is bad advice as it is notorious for inducing insomnia.

Recommending Ritalin at all as a first response is dangerous as well...

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

#116

Post by nerdponx »

TheTrotters wrote: post #86
blunte wrote: post #68

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.

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!

This was my instinctual response as well. However I agree with another poster that I am happy to see a "negative" result published.

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

#117

Post by rattray »

schappim wrote: post #3

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.

They were only able to induce a 27 minute increase, so still no more than 6 hours of sleep total.

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

#118

Post by belly_joe »

nojs wrote: post #92

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.

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

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

#119

Post by vinay_ys »

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #87
schappim wrote: post #3

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.

The study also needs to examine: - Noise pollution - Air pollution and ventilation (PM2.5 and CO2) - Bed comfort - Temperature and humidity Its possible that the home environment is so bad, that any increase in sleep yields no improvement. By contrast the workplace might be comparatively better controlled. Getting rid of fossil-fueled cooking, power generation and transport solves some of these issues.

A lot of homes in crowded cities like Chennai and Bangalore are tightly packed, congested and poorly ventilated. Air (dust) and noise (human activity) pollution is very high. Within the same congested dwelling, there maybe people who have to get up very early and go to work or come home late and sleep late which disrupts everyone's sleep. So it is highly likely that there is only 4-5 hour window at night when things are quiet enough to get good sleep.

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

#120

Post by matwood »

schappim wrote: post #3

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.

> When I get under 6 hours I see a clear drop off in performance.

Same. I have a hard line at 6 hours. Over 6 and I'm good, less than 6 and I'm dead all day. I don't use an alarm and wake up naturally after around 7 hours of sleep, but that last hour I'm normally aware of the lighter sleep stage I'm in.

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