Slumber by degrees

Could an advanced degree help you sleep soundly through the night? The answer depends on your gender. A better education helps women sleep well, but worsens sleep in men, a new study suggests.

“For women, higher education may mean more resources, such as better support for child care and elderly care,” says Ying-Yeh Chen, a social epidemiologist at the Taipei City Psychiatric Centre in Taiwan, who led the research. For men, who tend to have fewer domestic responsibilities, a better education may mean a higher stress job and more hours away from home, she says.

Women suffer from insomnia up to twice as often as men. Biological factors could account for some of this difference, but scientists know little about how social factors, such as stress, affect sleep in men and women.

In the new study, Chen and colleagues analyzed data from a Taiwanese survey, conducted in 2001, of nearly 40,000 men and women ages 15 and older. The survey asked participants about their marriage and employment status, as well as their income, education and number of children.

They found that although education improves sleep in women, divorce and unemployment affected women’s sleep more than men’s.

“Divorce worsens insomnia for both genders, but the effect is much larger among women,” says Chen. “It may be related to the stress associated with single parenthood, loss of economic support and the social stigma attached to divorce or separation.”

The smallest gender gap in insomnia occurs among male and female students, says Chen, who have similar financial concerns and few domestic responsibilities.

This suggests that if men and women were in equal places, gender differences in insomnia might go away, Chen says.

The findings were published in the June issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.