Race/ethnicity, sleep duration, and mortality risk in the United States

A sleep study from HERC members Justin Denney, Anna Zamora-Kapoor, Devin Hansen and Paul Whitney has been published in SSM – Population Health (2023).

“Our study confirms elevated risks of death from any cause for adults getting inadequate sleep, specifically less than 5 hours, and for adults getting excessive sleep, specifically more than 9 hours over a 24-hour period,” said Justin T. Denney, corresponding author of the study. “In addition, we reveal that these risks are specific to racial and ethnic identity. For example, the mortality risks we discover for excessive sleep are more pronounced for non-Hispanic White than they are for non-Hispanic Black, Asian, or Hispanic adults.

“For example, we discovered that, after adjusting for other important risk factors for mortality, non-Hispanic White adults who slept greater than 9 hours on average had almost twice the risk of death from any cause compared to those who slept the recommended 7 to 9 hours. The excessive risk of death from any cause for Whites who slept more than 9 hours on average was 1.3 times higher than Black and Hispanic adults who slept more than 9 hours and 1.8 times higher than Asian adults who slept more than 9 hours.”

Abstract

Current evidence and professional guidance recommend sleeping between 7 and 9 h in a 24-hour period for optimal health. The present study examines the association between sleep duration and mortality and assesses whether this association varies by racial/ethnic identity for a large and diverse sample of United States adults. We use data on 274,836 adults, aged 25 and older, from the 2004–2014 waves of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) linked to prospective mortality through 2015 (23,382 deaths). Cox proportional hazards models were used in multi-variable regressions to estimate hazard ratios for mortality by sleep duration and racial/ethnic identity, controlling for sociodemographic, socioeconomic, and psychological distress variables. We find elevated risks of mortality from any cause for adults who sleep less than 5 h or more than 9 h in a 24-hour period after all adjustments. Further, we find evidence that these elevated risks for mortality are more pronounced for some racial/ethnic groups and less pronounced for others. Improved understanding of differences in sleep duration and sleep health can facilitate more effective and culturally-tailored interventions around sleep health, improving overall well-being and enhancing longevity.