Skin color stratification and sleep duration: Evidence from a nationally representative sample

Sleep shapes population health. While substantial research has illustrated that sleep duration is stratified by racial/ethnic identification in the United States, less is known regarding how these population patterns may also vary by skin color. This is an oversight given that a burgeoning body of research has documented the association between skin color and health. The current study aims to document skin color-based disparities in sleep duration at the population level.

We analyzed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health, n = 9114) using multinomial regression to predict differences among adults residing in the US in 2016-2018 in self-reported sleep duration between short sleep (≤6 hours per 24-hour period) and long sleep (≥9 hours per 24-hour period) relative to normal sleep (7-8 hours per 24-hour period) among a nationally representative sample of individuals from the US.

Individuals with dark and to a lesser extent medium skin are at higher odds of short sleep than those with light skin. Individuals with medium and also dark skin are also at higher odds of long sleep than those with light skin. However, evidential support for racial/ethnic moderation of skin tone effects was weak. These results were generally consistent when extensive covariates were included.

This work stresses the importance of race/ethnicity and skin color in shaping population-level sleep patterns.