The economist Dan Hamermesh, shown here practicing what he researches, wrote a landmark paper in the economics of sleep.
Season 6, Episode 16
On this week’s episode of Freakonomics Radio: poor sleep can impair our cognitive function; sleep loss has been linked to adverse physical outcomes like weight gain and, increasingly, more serious maladies; and the Centers for Disease Control recently declared insufficient sleep a “public-health epidemic.” So are we treating the problem as seriously as we ought to be? And is it possible that lack of sleep can even explain the income gap? We speak with sleep researchers, economists, a psychologist and an epidemiologist to answer these questions.
To find out more, check out the podcasts from which this hour was drawn, “The Economics of Sleep, Part 1” and “The Economics of Sleep, Part 2.”
You can subscribe to the Freakonomics Radio podcast at iTunes or elsewhere, or get the RSS feed.
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