The Economics of Sleep

Economic methodology is usually used to predict things like an individual's likely income, life expectancy, or expected happiness based on variables like gender, race, years of schooling, religion, or profession. These same techniques can be used to predict how much an individual will sleep. Even though sleep is a non-market activity, we can think of it as one of many different options of what an individual can do in the limited 24 hours a day. We explore what research predicts about sleep patterns based on different demographic variables.