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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

#131
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm...extremely skeptical a generic "data entry job" is "high cognitive demand". I can write new applications (atrociously) on basically no sleep, so I'm pretty skeptical "sit at this desk and enter these things" swings one way or the other (or even has much of an ability to quality check - at least the compiler will yell at me when I'm egregiously wrong). I'd be far more interested if these people could be trusted t…

I just got a good laugh out of the image of a study putting sleep deprived people in charge of heavy machinery for science.

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

#132
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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's not absense of evidence as in hasn't been tested - they have been compared and it doesn't really come off as worse or at best only a little worse (and in some cases better than 8). >It doesn't matter that much in this case because we already agree that it's worse - the question is how much worse. Who…

I don't understand. The study you cited, a meta-analysis, reviews the adverse effects of short and long sleep on

* Mortality

* Incident cardiovascular disease

* Incident type 2 diabetes

* Mental health (incident depression)

* Brain health (incident cognitive disorders)

* Cognitive function

* Falls

* Accidents and injuries

and six other outcomes. The authors conclude:

> Conclusion

> A comprehensive body of evidence supports the presence of a U-shaped association between sleep duration and health outcomes in adults. Dose–response curves showed that the sleep duration that was most favourably associated with the health outcomes that were examined was around 7–8 h per day in adults, with no apparent modification of the effect by age in the few studies that looked at it.

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

#133
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.

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

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Even when I'm "full focused" I still use stuff to automatic check my work (same as you). However I'm bit worried on how you seem functioning on "automatic"... I really do recommend going to a doctor.

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

#135
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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's not absense of evidence as in hasn't been tested - they have been compared and it doesn't really come off as worse or at best only a little worse (and in some cases better than 8). >It doesn't matter that much in this case because we already agree that it's worse - the question is how much worse. Who…

[deleted]

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

#136
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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's not absense of evidence as in hasn't been tested - they have been compared and it doesn't really come off as worse or at best only a little worse (and in some cases better than 8). >It doesn't matter that much in this case because we already agree that it's worse - the question is how much worse. Who…

I don't understand. The study you cited, a meta-analysis, reviews the adverse effects of short and long sleep on * Mortality * Incident cardiovascular disease * Incident type 2 diabetes * Mental health (incident depression) * Brain health (incident cognitive disorders) * Cognitive function * Falls * Accidents and injuries and six other outcomes. The authors conclude: > Conclusion > A comprehensive body of evidence su…

I specifically cited the actual results from the meta-analysis. In the conclusion and abstract they seem to mostly talk about 7-8 vs really short or longer sleep but when you look at the analysis there's barely any adverse effects at 6 (and indeed 6 is better than 8 and only a tiny bit worse than 7 on the most important thing from most studies - all-cause mortality).

Yes, of course sleeping, say, 2 hours a night is too little. My claims and quotations were about 6 hours, which is roughly what the people in OP slept, too.

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

#137
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm...extremely skeptical a generic "data entry job" is "high cognitive demand". I can write new applications (atrociously) on basically no sleep, so I'm pretty skeptical "sit at this desk and enter these things" swings one way or the other (or even has much of an ability to quality check - at least the compiler will yell at me when I'm egregiously wrong). I'd be far more interested if these people could be trusted t…

You're not "economically poor". If the economically poor had such creative jobs, our economy would work very differently.

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

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country it's the same, I think it is done that way because most people jobs start at 8 or 9, there's no school bus system, only private transport for kids going to school, so this schedule gives a chance for parents to drop off their kids at school and make it to work afterwards. Personally I hated it at the time, because getting up early is not my thing, but now I appreciate the time I got to talk with my pare…

In the USA, school schedules are at least partially dictated by after-school sports. Classes need to end early enough that teams can practice in daylight.

Another argument for the separation of Sport and State.

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

#139
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.

I would look at the eight hours in bed as a possible explanation. While they weren't technically asleep, they likely still saw resting benefits just from laying down for a prolonged period of time.

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

#140
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well not really. Actually minimum wage in Ukraine (where I live) is rather low, so businesses generally pay higher. Fast food workers are not on minimum wage. In terms of salary a school teacher would make less or the same as McDonalds worker. For example, McDonalds Ukraine pays an entry level worker -14 000 UAH ($500) monthly for 40 hours per week. School teacher makes minimum 5000 UAH ($180), +bonus(10-60%). Teache…

Ah, sorry, didn't know things are that bad in Ukraine. I'm from Bulgaria so i can assure you my stereotypes are mixed and i don't think everything is like in the US or Western Europe.

How's the new president doing? At first it seemed like a joke, but the little concrete things i've read about him post-election seemed OK.

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