health

The strange way your sleeping patterns can affect your income.

Joan Costa-Font and Sarah Flèche were tired. Like, really tired.

Both were new parents struggling to keep up their work productivity on little to no sleep each night. So the pair, based in the UK, decided to figure out just how much their sleepless nights were affecting their work.

And they were the perfect people to do so: Costa-Font is a health economist, Flèche a labour economist. Combined, they were able to run a scientific experiment that basically says, ‘I told you so’ to anyone doubting a parent’s exhaustion. 

Their goal was to quantify the ‘productivity drop’ that occurs in the early months of parenthood where sleep is but a distant memory. According to the pair, as little as one hour sleep loss per night can dramatically influence how long and how hard you can work in your chosen career, and eventually have a significant effect on your income.

“A one-hour reduction in sleep duration significantly decreases labour force participation, the number of hours worked and household income,” they write in the study.

“We argue that sleep is a major determinant of employment outcomes that needs more attention in designing economic models of time allocation and employment policies.”

(That’s the sound of a thousand mums cheering, by the way.)

So, they looked at a massive set of data called the ALSPAC data, which has followed more than 14,000 families from child birth to age 25 in the UK. This data provided massive reams of information about the parents’ characteristics, family background, parental and child sleep quality, employment, working-time decisions, income and job satisfaction.

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From here they were able to prove several work productivity trends specific to both male and female parents.

Whilst any parent would just roll their eyes at the concept that ‘babies make you tired’, the findings of the pair are actually fascinating.

For example, they found that just one more hour of sleep per night had a significant impact on a range of factors. 

“We find that improving the mother’s average nightly sleep duration by one hour increases employment by 4 percentage points,” writes the report, adding that it also increased the amount of time they could work for (7%), general job satisfaction (0.01 points), and their overall income (11%).

(Print that one out, and sticky tape it to the fridge. Your Sunday sleep-ins have officially been proven necessary.)

sleep deprived parents
"The survey is an ‘I told you so’ to anyone doubting that children ruin your life." (Image via Freestyle Images)
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(Print that one out, and sticky tape it to the fridge. Your Sunday sleep-ins have officially been proven necessary.)

But Costa-Font and Flèche were surprised at how little research had actually been done into how sleep deprivation affects new parents.

“Paradoxically, the extent to which sleep time is a productive activity or not, has received very limited attention in economics research so far,” they say in their report.

“Sleep is often overlooked in economics models despite its obvious restorative effects on human health alongside its influence on brain plasticity and feelings of wellbeing.”

Lack of sleep is related to a long list of health problems, including depression, weight gain, diabetes, hypertension, and a drop in cognitive and motor functions. With this is mind, it’s not hard to grasp why sleep deprived employees are not able to perform as highly as others.

sleep deprived parents
"Just one more hour of sleep per night had a dramatic affect on their work." (Image via iStock)
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In an interview with Quartz online, Costa-Font admits that he is ‘obsessed’ with sleep.

“The implications are huge” said Costa-Font. “You have to recognise the impact on parents—not only are they going through hardship of having kids, but when they work they are less productive.”

“For me, sleep deprivation has huge draining effects.”

So, how can these results help parents struggling to manage lack of sleep, with full time or part time work?

Costa-Font says that it comes down to rethinking our current work models. Placing parents - especially new parents - in the same category as other employees is now officially not feasible, thanks to the report’s findings.

“If we think of policies to incentivise fertility and children, we need to think beyond just childcare and about how to compensate parents for their productivity loss,” he said to Quartz. 

Starting with lunchtime naps, me thinks.