Urban and Regional Analysis

In this paper we investigate the causal impact of sleep disruption on health with data from the longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) in the Netherlands between 2008 and 2013. We control for an extensive set of socio-economic, demographic, dwelling, and neighbourhood characteristics. To address identification concerns of potential endogeneity, we adopt an innovative instrumental variable that exploits individual-specific exposure to neighbourhood noise to instrument for sleep disruption. Consistent with theory, we find statistically and economically significant causal effects of sleep disruption on cardiovascular, lung, bones&joints problems, and headache. However contrary to the reduced form results (and many other observational studies), we do not find a statistically significant causal effect of sleep disruption on diabetes. Our results remain robust to checks for self-reporting bias, alternative instruments, and unobservable bias. The findings shed light on the importance of sleep quality control and public policies related.