Stats Canada: Sleep patterns and income level

[I'm flagging this information because quantity and quality of sleep is critical to performance in the workplace.- Ed]

From Stats Canada's June 3, 2008 Canadian Social Trends document:

The 2005 GSS confirms that men sleep less than women. In their sleep diary, respondents aged 15 and over were asked to record the time they fell asleep and the time they woke up. The data from these diaries show that men slept for an average of 8 hours and 7 minutes, about 11 minutes less than women (Table 1).

The belief that women suffer more disturbed sleep because they wake more easily is also confirmed. Indeed, the GSS does show that although women sleep more than men, they reported a higher rate of trouble falling asleep or staying asleep: 35% of women versus only 25% of men, a 10 percentage point difference (Table 2).

I find that information very interesting. It doesn't even seem to be an issue of more women working in part time positions skewing the overall averages, if anything, they level them off:

When we look at labour force attachment by gender, it is clear that working full-time is a key factor associated with the gender sleep gap (Chart 1). Indeed, the data confirm that men who work full-time sleep 14 minutes less than women who work full-time, or about 85 hours or 3.5 days less sleep per year. However, for Canadians who work part-time or have no employment, there is no difference between the sexes in terms of sleep time.

Shift work and fatigue:

Not surprisingly, shift work has a significant effect on worker fatigue, and affects quality of sleep for both men and women shift workers. When work schedules creep into the night, they create a non-typical sleep schedule that disturbs the body's natural pattern of rest and rejuvenation. Multiple studies show that the disruption of natural biological rhythms is related to a variety of physical and mental problems, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, asthma, diabetes and depression.

More money, less sleep - though this isn't speaking about the quality of sleep.

According to the 2005 GSS, Canadians with personal income of $60,000 or more slept 7 hours and 50 minutes on average. In contrast, their lower income counterparts making less than $20,000 slept 40 minutes more at night.

Exchanging health for wealth?

High-income Canadians tend to dedicate more time to their paid work, spend less time with their children and less time engaged in leisure activities; the large majority also feels rushed more than a few times a week.

I was surprised by this information - it really contradicted what seemed intuitive to me. Which, of course is why we do research. I expected to see the loss of sleep in high end jobs, but not in the mid-range. I also anticipated that the stress of struggling to make ends meet would mean less sleep in the low-income bracket.

Posted by: gisela on 2008-06-16 00:27:38

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