An empirical note on commuting distance and sleep during workweek and weekend

Abstract

The author uses six years of large-scale panel survey data for Germany to analyse the nexus between commuting distance from the place of residence to the workplace and quantity of sleep. Pooled and individual fixed-effects regressions indicate that workers with longer commuting distance sleep significantly less per night during the workweek, but not less during the weekend. A one kilometer longer commuting distance is on average correlated with 0.0035 (pooled) and 0.0011 (fixed-effects) hours less sleep per night during the workweek. As commuting seems to affect sleep quantity, it might negatively affect health and time allocation for other leisure activities.