Mint sleep study: Marriage impact, Gen Z vs millennials, doctors vs techies
- An exclusive Mint study of large-scale survey data recently revealed worrisome trends of Indian women's sleep crisis.
- In a new analysis, we explore the impact of generation gap, marital status and profession. We also examine how much extra sleep different professions get on their weekly off day.
Indian women in the prime working age are piling up significant amounts of “sleep debt", with household duties and child-rearing likely posing the biggest challenge, a recent Mint analysis of sleeping habits in the country showed.
Women’s sleep deficit when compared to men expands to nearly 30 minutes in the 30s, the age group when family duties are at their peak, the analysis showed. Even in this age group, 70% of rural men and 66% of urban men still manage eight hours of sleep, but the corresponding shares for women are 50% and 45%.
There is no gender gap in childhood and adolescence, and it starts appearing only later as different gender roles become visible.
The analysis used raw data from the government's 2024 Time Use Survey, which asked a representative sample of 454,192 Indians to list out everything they did over a 24-hour period. The full analysis was published by Mint last month in a special report.
Homemakers sleep less than the men in their households at night but often compensate with daytime naps, which takes their total sleep time above men’s. However, experts emphasize that uninterrupted nighttime sleep is more important for health.
The analysis also found that over 55% of urban children go to bed after 10pm, with screen time being the most common pre-bedtime activity for older teens. Around 34% of older urban teens watch TV or videos before sleeping, a habit no less prevalent among their fathers, i.e. in the age group of 30 to 50.
In contrast, cleaning up the kitchen is a common pre-bedtime ritual for women. About 18% of rural and 16% of urban women end their day doing this, an activity almost nonexistent for men, the analysis showed.
The elderly also face challenges, with one in ten Indians over the age of 70 reporting at least half an hour of "sleeplessness"—the struggle to fall asleep.
The full analysis is available here. Here are more findings not previously covered in the analysis: from the impact of marriage and profession to the practice of sleeping on your weekly off day.
Marriage impact
The singular impact of marriage on a health need such as sleep is abundantly clear when we look at the gender gap among those who are widowed or divorced. Among such individuals, the gender gap reverses to just 13 minutes (again, in favour of men), from 23 minutes among the married ones.
In simple words, this means that widowed or divorced women sleep 13 minutes less than similar men on average, while married women sleep 23 minutes less than married men.
There is no gender gap among singles. This analysis excludes senior citizens, who sleep more in general and do not exhibit any major gender gaps.
Gen Z vs millennials
Does the younger generation do any better than millennials on the ‘sleep gender gap’? Our analysis doesn’t show any notable difference, with marriage being the prime factor driving the gap.
Singles in all age groups (whether Gen Z or millennials) have little to no gender gap in sleep time. Among married ones, women sleep nearly half an hour less than men among both generations.
In terms of gender parity, Gen Z do only slightly better than millennials in urban areas. Gen Z are those who were in the age group of 18-27 in the survey year (2024), and millennials are those aged between 28 and 43 years.
Sleep time here refers to the essential night-time sleep, and excludes nap time.
Work-sleep balance
The analysis also looked at sleep time for different professional categories. Among major groups, construction workers and technology professionals got the highest amount of essential sleep—about 8 hours 20 minutes.
On the other hand, health professionals and educators may be the most sleep-deprived: doctors, nurses and educators reported an average night sleep time of 7 hours 50 minutes. Just over half of the individuals in these categories got eight hours of sleep.
Note that several of the major profession categories mostly comprise men, who get more sleep than women. Among these groups, tech professionals sleep the last, at 10.38pm on average, and farmers the earliest (9.36pm).
Repaying sleep debt
Around 12% of the survey sample was interviewed on their off day (holiday, weekly off, etc.). For each major profession category, we looked at the average sleep time of those who gave data for a normal work day, and for those who gave data for an off day. The gap could roughly tell us how much additional sleep workers get on the off day—an indicator of the sleep debt they have accumulated over the work week.
Tech professionals sleep an extra 100 minutes on their off day as compared to a work day. This includes an average of 1 hour of nap, compared to almost none during the work week. For farmers, the gap is just 24 minutes.
Night-time woes
The analysis showed that those who sleep late at night also get less amount of sleep. This indicates the possibility of a perpetual sleep deficit for those who work in late shifts or those who keep themselves awake till late.
Among all working individuals in urban India who went to bed between 6pm and 9pm, the average sleep time was 9 hours 31 minutes. For those who went to bed between 9pm and 10pm, this was 8 hours 44 minutes.
The sleep time progressively declines as bedtime gets delayed. It was the lowest for the group that went to bed between midnight and 5 am: just seven hours.
For this, only those who answered the survey on a normal work day and were employed were included.
Pre-bedtime rituals
The analysis showed that watching television or videos is one of the most common activities immediately before bedtime for men. For a significant share of women, a common pre-bedtime ritual is cleaning up the kitchen after a meal. But where are these trends most common?
In Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, nearly half of the men engage in screen time before bed. The share is around 40% in Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Kerala and Maharashtra as well.
Meanwhile, kitchen cleanup is the most common for women in Odisha, Delhi and Karnataka. Small states and Union territories were excluded from this analysis.
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