September 25, 2018 | The Guardian

Sleepless in ... Seattle? Which city gets the least shuteye?

Among development economists, sleep isn’t a mainstream subject. Schofield wants to change that, and as a result, the lab run by Schofield and colleagues in Chennai is pioneering a study into the impact of improved sleep on poverty reduction. So far, the lab has found that participants sleep an average of five and a half hours a night. By distributing sleep mats and earplugs, it has managed to increase night-time sleep by an extra 30 minutes.

Yet if less sleep is associated with lower wages, shouldn’t people in Tokyo, where average incomes are higher, be getting more sleep than those in Chennai?

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