November 30, 2016

THE MACHINES DON'T SLEEP:

LACK OF SLEEP COULD COST AMERICANS $411 BILLION A YEAR : IF YOU DON'T SNOOZE, THE ECONOMY WILL LOSE (Sarah Fecht, 11/30/16, Popular Science)

[A]ccording to a new study, America's lack of sleep may be costing us big--to the tune of $411 billion a year.

A team of economists, psychologists, and policy wonks from the Rand Corporation, a non-profit think tank, came up with this estimate after reviewing previous studies and plugging numbers into an economic model.

More than a third of American adults aren't getting enough sleep. That's not good. Besides making you more prone to accidents, insufficient sleep is linked with heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other health problems.
In analyzing previous studies, the Rand researchers estimated that a person who regularly sleeps less than six hours per night has a 13 percent higher chance of dying at any given time, compared to someone who sleeps seven to nine hours a night. Dying is a bit of a setback for you personally, of course, but it's also bad for the economy, which loses a worker when you go.

And even if when your sleepiness doesn't kill you, it kills your productivity. Based on the Britain's Healthiest Workplace survey of 66,000 workers, the Rand researchers calculated that someone who gets less than six hours of sleep per night loses 2.4 percent productivity compared to someone who got a full night's rest. That adds up to losing about 6 extra days of work per year, either through low productivity or the use of sick days.

Posted by at November 30, 2016 4:27 PM

  

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