Sleepwalking through School: New Evidence on Sleep and Academic Performance

Kurt Wang (), Joseph J. Sabia () and Resul Cesur ()
Additional contact information
Kurt Wang: San Diego State University
Joseph J. Sabia: San Diego State University

No 9829, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Policymakers advocating for later school starting times argue that increased sleep duration may generate important schooling benefits. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines the relationship between sleep duration and academic performance, while carefully controlling for difficult-to-measure characteristics at the family- and individual-levels. We find that increased sleep time is associated with improvements in classroom concentration as well as increased educational attainment. However, we also find evidence of diminishing returns to increased sleep. We estimate an "academic optimum" number of sleep hours of, on average, 8.5 hours per night. Turning to sleep quality, we find that the onset of insomnia-like symptoms is associated with diminished contemporaneous academic concentration, but little change in longer-run educational attainment.

Keywords: insomnia; schooling; human capital; sleep (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2016-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Contemporary Economic Policy, 2017, 35 (2), 331 - 344

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9829.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9829

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().