Do the Rich or Poor Sleep More?

We sleep and relax an average of 9.84 hours each day:

More than one-third, 9.84 represents a hefty chunk of our 24-hour day.

It reflects our time use tradeoffs.

Time Use

Within countries and between them, the patterns are similar. The rich sleep less.

Sleep

When researchers correlated household income and per capita GDP within and between countries, they found similar results. In a typical country, full time top income quartile workers sleep a half hour less than workers in the lowest quartile. Correspondingly, comparing countries, we also see that sleep hours decrease as per capita GDP increases.

Commenting on their work, the researchers asked us to consider if we consciously decide how much to sleep rather than perceiving it as the time left over after our activities. They wondered if, like other non-market activities, sleep reflects an intentional tradeoff.

Non-work Activities

Then, taking the next step, the paper quantified time spent on non-work activities. Looking at social activities like dining out, individual activities such as video games, home production, and leisure, they also found a difference between high and low household income. Here, the results reverse. We have the lower income quartiles spending less time on non-work pleasure.

Work Hours

As a final question, we can ask how work hours compare to GDP per capita. Here Our World in Data says, “workers in poorer countries actually tend to work more, and sometimes much more.” A country like Switzerland, located at the lower right quadrant of our graph works fewer hours and has much higher income than the world’s Bangladeshis and Pakistanis:

Our Bottom Line: Poverty

We know that households in lower per capita GDP countries have less disposable income. Consumption poor, they possess fewer goods and services. But also, spending more time at work, they are leisure poor. After work, less time is available for school and enjoyment. Perhaps being leisure poor explains the order of countries in the World Happiness Report.

My sources and more: Thanks to Marginal Revolution for alerting me to the sleep paper. From there, I was delighted to have discovered that Our World in Data took a look at time use.