Sleep and Human Capital: Evidence from Daylight Saving Time

Lawrence Jin and Nicolas Ziebarth ()

No 160001, Working Papers from Canadian Centre for Health Economics

Abstract: This paper is one of the first to test for a causal relationship between sleep and human capital. It exploits the quasi-experimental nature of Daylight Saving Time (DST), up to 3.4 million BRFSS respondents from the US, and all 160 million hospital admissions from Germany over one decade. We find evidence of mild negative health effects when clocks are set forward one hour in spring. When clocks are set back one hour in fall, effectively extending sleep duration for the sleep deprived by one hour, sleep duration and self-reported health increase and hospital admissions decrease significantly for four days.

Keywords: sleep; human capital; Daylight Saving Time (DST); BRFSS; hospital admissions; sleep deprivation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 I18 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 75 pages
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-hrm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published Online, January 2016
Published in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020, vol. 170, pp. 174-1192.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.canadiancentreforhealtheconomics.ca/wp- ... 6/01/JinZiebarth.pdf First version, 2016 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Sleep and Human Capital: Evidence from Daylight Saving Time (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cch:wpaper:160001

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