Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/262741 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
GLO Discussion Paper No. 1150
Publisher: 
Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen
Abstract: 
This paper studies the extent to which sleep duration causally affects health, cognitive and noncognitive development in children and adolescents. Using over 50 thousand time use diaries from two cohorts of Australian children spanning over 16 years, we first document that children sleep significantly less on days with longer daylight duration, partly by going to sleep later and waking up earlier. We then exploit variations in local daily daylight duration measured on predetermined diary dates across the same individuals through time as an instrument in an individual fixed effects regression model to draw causal estimates of sleep duration on a comprehensive set of child development indicators. Our results show that sleeping longer improves selected general developmental, behavioural and health outcomes in children and adolescents. By contrast, sleeping more statistically significantly increases their BMI scores, mainly by increasing the risk of being overweight. Moreover, while the impact of sleep duration on general and behavioural outcomes is more pronounced for females or older individuals, the effect on BMI is largely driven by males. The results indicate a null or relatively small positive impact of sleeping longer on cognitive skills.
Subjects: 
Sleep
Time Allocation
Circadian Rhythms
Human Capital
Child Development
JEL: 
I00
I12
J22
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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