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Sleep is a luxury good: poor Americans get less than the rich

This chart shows a stark divide between how much sleep rich and poor Americans get. The less you make, the likelier you are to sleep less than six hours a night:

sleep
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

In 2013, 35.2 percent of adults below the poverty line reported getting less than six hours of sleep per night. Among those earning 400 percent of the poverty line ($47,080 for an individual and $97,000 for a family of four) or above, the number falls to 27.7 percent.

Overall, Americans tend to sleep less than people in other countries — including Canada, Germany, and Mexico, just to name a few other places. It's enough of a problem that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called the lack of sleep in America an epidemic. This new data suggests that the epidemic's costs aren't borne equally: low-income Americans are suffering more.

(h/t Margot Sanger-Katz at the New York Times)

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