Lost Sleep Is Costing Japan’s Economy Billions

Feb 16, 2017 | Curated, Regional | 0 |

The government of Japan is offering financial incentives to address the country’s epidemic of sleep deprivation, Bloomberg reports.

While a number of factors are to blame for Japan’s poor productivity per worker, sleep deprivation is costing Japan more than its G-7 peers, according to a five-nation study by RAND Europe, a subsidiary of the research group RAND Corp. Lack of sleep is a drag of up to $138 billion a year on Japan’s economy, or about 2.9 percent of gross domestic product, the study found.

Simply increasing nightly sleep from under six hours to between six and seven hours could add $75.7 billion to the Japanese economy, the report said.