Money worries are keeping us from a good night’s sleep

Many of us lie in bed counting money rather than sheep, it seems. And it is causing us to lose a huge amount of sleep.

New research from the Institute of Education (IOE) suggests that almost half of women with financial worries – and more than a third of men who struggle to “get by” — have trouble falling asleep at night.

By contrast, only 20 per cent of women and 13 per cent of men who are comfortably off say they find it difficult to get to sleep.

The IOE research was conducted by Dr Stella Chatzitheochari, who analysed the sleep patterns of approximately 9,000 50-year-old men and women being followed by the long-running 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS), which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

“Those who are finding it quite or very difficult to get by are significantly more likely to be poor sleepers than those without any financial worries,” Dr Chatzitheochari says. “It has been suggested that this is one of the reasons why economically disadvantaged people have poorer overall health.”

“Previous research has shown that sleep deprivation is linked to poorer performance in a range of tasks, and associated with high blood pressure and obesity as well as chronic conditions such as diabetes. Sleep problems linked to financial troubles are therefore likely to have huge cost implications for the National Health Service – as well as blighting many people’s lives.”

Having a mortgage does not, however, seem to worry us as much as other debts. Dr Chatzitheochari’s study found that poor sleep was most common among those who rent. Contrary to expectations, she did not find any significant differences in sleep patterns between people who own their home outright and those who are still paying off a mortgage.

Almost four in ten (37 per cent) women who rented felt they did not get enough sleep, compared to 24 per cent of women with a mortgage and 21 per cent who owned their home outright. Similarly, 28 per cent of men renting reported inadequate sleep, in contrast to 20 per cent of those with a mortgage and 18 per cent of home-owners with no mortgage. Men and women who rented were also more likely to have trouble falling asleep and to wake during the night.

The study found that those in paid employment slept better than those who did not work. About a third (32 per cent) of men included in the study who were not in paid work — and an even higher proportion of women (37 per cent) — said they did not get enough sleep and did not wake up feeling rested. Approximately two in ten men and women who worked said they suffered from this problem.

Sleep problems were more common among smokers than non-smokers, and among those who didn’t exercise regularly.

Significant differences were also found between the sleep quality of men and women, with one in four women reporting they did not get enough sleep, compared to one in five men. Twenty-six per cent of women said they found it difficult to get to sleep, compared to 17 per cent of men. Women were also more likely to wake during the night and have trouble falling back to sleep.

Men and women who were living with a partner reported sleeping better than those who were single.

Dr Chatzitheochari adds that the NCDS is one of the very few long-running social surveys to gather information on sleep patterns. The cohort members have been surveyed nine times since they were born in 1958. They will be visited again this year.

“NCDS therefore allows us to go beyond previous studies and understand the ways in which gender and socio-economic status influence sleep quality over time. Future analyses will allow us to better understand the factors that can lead to poor sleep,” she says. “The surveys have gathered very detailed information on cohort members’ occupational, family, and health histories, making NCDS a particularly important resource for the study of sleep problems.”

‘Prevalence and correlates of sleep problems at age 50: Initial results from the National Child Development Study’, by Dr Stella Chatzitheochari is the latest working paper to be published by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS). It will be downloadable from the CLS website from 9am on March 13, 2013. CLS is an Economic and Social Research Council resource centre.

Further information from:

Claire Battye
020 7612 6516
c.battye@ioe.ac.uk

Meghan Rainsberry
020 7612 6530
m.rainsberry@ioe.ac.uk

Notes for editors:

1. This study is believed to be one of the first to look at three specific criteria for a good night’s sleep: how many hours of sleep people got per night, how long they usually took to fall asleep, and how much their sleep was disturbed in the night.

2. The 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) began as a cross-sectional perinatal mortality survey of more than 17,000 infants born in England, Scotland and Wales in a single week in 1958. Cohort members were subsequently followed up at ages 7, 11, 16, 23, 33, 42, 46 and 50. The age 55 survey will be conducted this year. NCDS provides a wide range of information on cohort members’ life-course trajectories and circumstances, such as physical and mental health, education, employment, and housing.

3. The NCDS is managed by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), which is based at the Department for Quantitative Social Science, Institute of Education, University of London. CLS is responsible for running two of Britain’s other major birth cohort studies: the 1970 British Cohort Study and the Millennium Cohort Study. Further information available at www.cls.ioe.ac.uk

4. The Institute of Education is a college of the University of London that specialises in education and related areas of social science and professional practice. In the most recent Research Assessment Exercise two-thirds of the Institute’s research activity was judged to be internationally significant and over a third was judged to be “world leading”. The Institute was recognised by Ofsted in 2010 for its “high quality” initial teacher training programmes that inspire its students “to want to be outstanding teachers”. The IOE is a member of the 1994 Group, which brings together 12 internationally renowned, research-intensive universities. More at www.ioe.ac.uk

5. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK’s largest organisation for funding research on economic and social issues. It supports independent, high quality research which has an impact on business, the public sector and the third sector. The ESRC’s total budget for 2012-13 is £205 million. At any one time the ESRC supports over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic institutions and independent research institutes. More at www.esrc.ac.uk