There are a lot of advantages to earning more money, but getting a good night’s sleep may not be one of them.
It turns out that, in general, the more money people make, the less they sleep. That’s been true for decades in the United States, and in other countries as well. On average, adults earning the highest incomes — around $98,000 for a family of four — sleep 40 minutes less than people in the lowest-income families. And among short sleepers — those who are in the bottom 10 percent of nightly rest — high-income people are overrepresented, according to the government survey that sleep researchers trust most.
Sleeping too little is really bad for your health. Researchers have demonstrated that, for most people, sleeping less than six hours a night results in cognitive impairment. Poor sleep is also associated with a number of other health problems, and an increased risk of dying in a car accident.
In general, the factor that seems the most closely tied with how much sleep people get is how much they work. More hours of work tend to crowd out sleep. People who work two jobs sleep the least of anyone, according to a recent study, and are most likely to be in the bottom 10 percent of sleepers, sometimes called “short sleepers.”
[For more of this story, written by Margot Sanger-Katz, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...2&abg=1&_r=0]
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