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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

#101

Post by Pyramus »

bdibs wrote: post #95
Tenoke wrote: post #91

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…

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/

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.

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

#102

Post by Tenoke »

bdibs wrote: post #95
Tenoke wrote: post #91

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…

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 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 (>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

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

#103

Post by Pyramus »

shash wrote: post #67
Scoundreller wrote: post #9

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

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…

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.

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

#104

Post by ido »

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.

Maybe also south or south-east asia (aside from the asian tiger)?

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

#105

Post by arisAlexis »

nkmnz wrote: post #43
throwawaysleep wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#106

Post by anticensor »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #26
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.

The same can be said for other drugs that raise monoamine neurotransmitter levels, such as amphetamines.

Stimulant overdosage can cause permanent brain damage.

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

#107

Post by Guthur »

movedx wrote: post #97
Guthur wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> 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.

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.

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

#108

Post by artem247 »

sofixa wrote: post #73
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…

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%). Teacher who was awarded a "highest category" certification (that would be a very experienced one) and who will get all the possible bonuses and raises will make around 14 000 UAH, roughly.

Workers, cleaning personnel would make in the same ballpark 9000 - 14000 UAH ($300-500) at least in Kyiv. Selling phones in the store, work at supermarket also has a similar remuneration.

Average doctor salary (not nurse) is 9000 UAH, at least officially.

The reason is - most those highly skilled and highly educated workers that I've mentioned are paid by the government which does not have funds and desire honestly to treat these people well. They are remnants of decaying public infrastructure - Ukraine has de jure free universal health care and a very big amount of government-funded seats at state universities. Still it is better to work at school than at the factory probably.

You just have a stereotype of how certain things work, everything is not like US/Western Europe structurally. Higher education is not a ticket to a better life everywhere.

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

#109

Post by bjornsing »

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.

Is it so surprising? The key takeaway could be rephrased “Healthy humans living under conditions similar to our evolutionary past naturally sleep an optimal amount of time at night.”

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

Or is it “When I temporarily find myself in an environment with stress-levels similar to those of the people in the study I a) start to perform like them on modern day tasks and b) start to sleep like them.”?

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

#110

Post by artem247 »

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?

Ukraine. I think it would similar in other post-socialist states where transition to market economy was not a big success. I would put Moldova, Armenia in the same ballpark, maybe certain poorer Central Asia states like Uzbekistan but I'm not 100% sure.
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