Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/250662 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 15001
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Using Dutch time-diary data from 1975-2005 covering over 10,000 respondents for 7 consecutive days each, we show that individuals' sleep time exhibits both variability and volatility characterized by stationary autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity: The absolute values of deviations from a person's average sleep on one day are positively correlated with those on the next day. Sleep is more variable on weekends and among people with less education, who are younger and who do not have young children at home. Volatility is greater among parents with young children, slightly greater among men than women, but independent of other demographics. A theory of economic incentives to minimize the dispersion of sleep predicts that higher-wage workers will exhibit less dispersion, a result demonstrated using extraneous estimates of earnings equations to impute wage rates. Volatility in sleep spills over onto volatility in other personal activities, with no reverse causation onto sleep. The results illustrate a novel dimension of economic inequality and could be applied to a wide variety of human behavior and biological processes.
Subjects: 
time use
ARCH
economic incentives in biological processes
volatility
JEL: 
C22
J22
I14
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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