Black young
adults may be more likely to lose sleep over student loan debt than people of
other racial and ethnic groups, a U.S. study suggests.
Researchers
surveyed former college students in their mid-20s to early 30s about their debt
load and sleep habits. They found black people were more likely than white
people to take out student loans – and they were also more likely to still have
loans outstanding by the time they reached age 25.
Among those
with student debt, black people typically slept about 42 fewer minutes a night
than white individuals if they borrowed around $25,000 in loans. Even when
black people didn't have any debt, they still got about 16 fewer minutes of
sleep than white people.
"In the
U.S., blacks earn less and acquire less wealth for the same amount of
education," said lead study author Katrina Walsemann, a researcher at the
University of South Carolina in Columbia.
"Earning
less money and having less wealth may increase the strain associated with
student debt," Walsemann added by email. "This may be why we found
that racial disparities in sleep were greater among individuals with more
student debt."
To
understand the link between student debt and sleep among different racial and
ethnic groups, Walsemann and colleagues analyzed survey data from almost 9,000
people born between 1980 and 1984. They did initial interviews in 1997 and
conducted annual follow-up interviews through 2010, the year sleep was
measured.
Half of the
survey respondents had college debt, with an average loan amount of $10,176.
Most had completed college by 2010, when they were 25 to 31 years old. By age
25, fewer of the participants owed money – just 36 percent of them – but their
average debt amount had climbed to $17,765.
In 2010, the
study loan participants were sleeping an
average of 6.8 hours each night, but white people slept about half an hour more
than black individuals.
One
limitation of the study is that it relied on participants to accurately recall
and report how much sleep they got, the researchers acknowledge in the Journal
of Epidemiology and Community Health. They also lacked data on student debt
acquired after age 25 and may not have accounted for all of the social and
economic factors that could influence the amount of debt or the amount of
sleep.
It also
doesn't show that more debt causes poor sleep, but it does offer more evidence
of the ill health effects of poverty, noted Sara Goldrick-Rab, a researcher in
educational policy and financial security at the University of Wisconsin in
Madison who wasn't involved in the study.
"Poverty
is associated with many health consequences – including lack of sleep – and
African Americans in the U.S. are dealing with a greater depth of poverty than
other racial groups," Goldrick-Rab said by email.
When it
comes to sleep, the average hours of rest aren't the only factor that matters,
noted Alexandros Vgontzas, a psychiatry and sleep researcher at Pennsylvania
State University College of Medicine.
"The
true issue is not more hours of sleep but better quality of sleep which in turn
means better ways to prevent, handle and cope with excessive stress,"
Vgontzas, who wasn't involved in the study, said by email. Sleep disparities
found in the study are "a reflection of higher levels of stress in
minority students," he added.
Source : http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/08/27/us-health-sleep-debt-idINKCN0QW23J20150827
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