Lack of sleep can turn you into a slacker and shorten your life
Sleeping under six hours a night will affect your work and make you 13 per cent likelier to die prematurely, a study shows. Also in health news: links between alcohol and heart disease, and between mental health and youth ailments
A lack of sleep among the US working population is costing the economy up to US$411 billion a year, which is 2.28 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, a new report finds. According to researchers at the not-for-profit research organisation Rand Europe, sleep deprivation leads to a higher mortality risk and lower productivity levels among the workforce.
A person who sleeps on average fewer than six hours a night has a 13 per cent higher mortality risk than someone sleeping between seven and nine hours (described as a “healthy daily sleep range”), researchers found, while those sleeping between six and seven hours a day have a 7 per cent higher mortality risk.
In total, the US loses a little more than 1.2 million working days a year to sleep deprivation among its working population. Productivity losses at work occur through a combination of absenteeism, employees not being at work, and presenteeism, where employees are at work when they are ill and consequently work to a lower standard.
The study is the first of its kind to quantify the economic losses due to lack of sleep among workers in five different countries. Overall, the US suffers the biggest financial losses, followed by Japan (US$138 billion), Germany (US$60 billion), the UK (US$50 billion) and Canada (US$21.4 billion).
