If you had a hard time waking up today, the following may not help for tomorrow morning. Sleeping is the single most time-consuming activity in our lives. We are not going to emphasize on how important sleep is. We all know it makes us more concentrate and healthier; it even makes us look better. That said, according to a recent research entitled “Time Use and Productivity: The Wage Returns to Sleep “, there is even more to sleep than we thought. This paper establishes a link between the number of hours we sleep and the sinews of war: our wages.

The experiment

The experiment took place in the United States. In each time zone, two cities were selected with even latitudes: one on the western sideboard, and one on the eastern sideboard. The sun on the east side went down approximately 60 minutes before the west side, and the authors pointed out that the population of the east was going to bed earlier. That way, they showed that the earlier the sunset is, the earlier people go to bed. Thing is, most people go to work between 8 and 9am, no matter where they live. In other words, people who lived on the eastern side were likely to get more sleep. They were also the ones whose wages were higher.

Where does the money come from?

Now, the question here is how do they earn more money than others? A previous research, “Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2004” came up with the result that one extra hour of sleep per night has such impact on the productivity of an employee that it is more valuable than a one year increase in education. Now we can fill the blanks. Of course an employee whose productivity is increased will certainly earn more money. According to the paper, the average increase is 16% of the wage per year, that is to say around 6 000$ a year for the average American salary.
Of course, the result of this research is not linear. One will not make more money by sleeping two more hours a night if his sleep-time crushes his work time. The results showed that the optimal wage-friendly amount of sleep is 9 hours per night in the United States.

Now, I am sure that you are going to think twice tonight before watching that last episode of your favourite show. You wouldn’t want to miss those 16%!

Source:

“Time Use and Productivity: The Wage Returns to Sleep” published on July 10, 2014 by Matthew Gibson and Jeffrey Shrader