{
  "title": "Sleep Statistics: the Gap Is Quality, Not Quantity",
  "url": "https://www.growyourmeadow.com/data/sleep-statistics",
  "description": "American women and men sleep almost exactly the same number of hours. Women are 1.5× as likely to have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. Federal survey data.",
  "publisher": "Wildcard Wellness",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-10",
  "updatedAt": "2026-09-10",
  "nextUpdate": "When NCHS publishes the next National Health Interview Survey sleep brief, typically annually",
  "licence": {
    "name": "CC BY 4.0",
    "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "note": "Free to reuse with attribution to Meadow and a link to the report."
  },
  "stats": [
    {
      "id": "short-sleep",
      "url": "https://www.growyourmeadow.com/data/sleep-statistics#short-sleep",
      "value": "30.5%",
      "label": "of US adults sleep under 7 hours",
      "claim": "Nearly a third of American adults (30.5%) slept less than 7 hours in a 24-hour period in 2024, according to the National Health Interview Survey.",
      "method": null,
      "sources": [
        "nchs-db559"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "no-duration-gap",
      "url": "https://www.growyourmeadow.com/data/sleep-statistics#no-duration-gap",
      "value": "0.2 points",
      "label": "the entire gap between men and women on sleep duration",
      "claim": "American men and women get almost identical amounts of sleep: 30.6% of men and 30.4% of women slept under 7 hours in 2024, a difference of 0.2 percentage points.",
      "method": "The difference between the men’s and women’s short-sleep percentages. NHIS estimates carry sampling error, and a gap this small is well inside it. The honest description is that there is no meaningful difference in duration, not that men sleep slightly less.",
      "sources": [
        "nchs-db559"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "falling-asleep",
      "url": "https://www.growyourmeadow.com/data/sleep-statistics#falling-asleep",
      "value": "1.5×",
      "label": "as likely as men to struggle to fall asleep, for women",
      "claim": "18.5% of American women had trouble falling asleep most days or every day in 2024, against 12.2% of men. That is about 1.5 times as likely.",
      "method": "The women’s percentage divided by the men’s (18.5 ÷ 12.2), a gap of 6.3 percentage points.",
      "sources": [
        "nchs-db559"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "staying-asleep",
      "url": "https://www.growyourmeadow.com/data/sleep-statistics#staying-asleep",
      "value": "21.4%",
      "label": "of women have trouble staying asleep, against 14.6% of men",
      "claim": "21.4% of American women had trouble staying asleep most days or every day in 2024, against 14.6% of men, a gap of 6.8 percentage points.",
      "method": null,
      "sources": [
        "nchs-db559"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "peak-age",
      "url": "https://www.growyourmeadow.com/data/sleep-statistics#peak-age",
      "value": "34.5%",
      "label": "of 50–64-year-olds sleep under 7 hours, the worst-hit age group",
      "claim": "Short sleep peaks in middle age: 34.5% of American adults aged 50–64 and 33.4% of those aged 35–49 slept under 7 hours in 2024, against 27.2% of both younger and older adults.",
      "method": null,
      "sources": [
        "nchs-db559"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "state-range",
      "url": "https://www.growyourmeadow.com/data/sleep-statistics#state-range",
      "value": "30%–46%",
      "label": "of adults get too little sleep, depending on the US state",
      "claim": "Insufficient sleep ranged from 30% of adults in Vermont to 46% in Hawaii in 2022, a 16-percentage-point spread between US states.",
      "method": null,
      "sources": [
        "cdc-faststats-sleep"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "survey-disagreement",
      "url": "https://www.growyourmeadow.com/data/sleep-statistics#survey-disagreement",
      "value": "9.03 vs 7",
      "label": "hours of sleep: what two federal surveys each measure",
      "claim": "Federal surveys give very different sleep figures: the American Time Use Survey records Americans spending 9.03 hours a day sleeping in 2025, while the National Health Interview Survey finds 30.5% getting under 7 hours in 2024.",
      "method": "Both are correct and they measure different things. NHIS asks how many hours a person usually sleeps in 24 hours. ATUS records time spent in the sleeping activity on one diary day, averaged across all seven days of the week, so it includes naps, weekend lie-ins and time in bed not asleep. The two cannot be quoted together as though they were the same measure.",
      "sources": [
        "nchs-db559",
        "atus-2025-t1"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "tables": [
    {
      "id": "sleep-by-sex",
      "title": "Sleep duration and sleep difficulty by sex, US adults, 2024 (%)",
      "columns": [
        "Measure",
        "Men",
        "Women",
        "Difference (women − men)"
      ],
      "rows": [
        [
          "Slept under 7 hours",
          30.6,
          30.4,
          -0.2
        ],
        [
          "Trouble falling asleep, most days or every day",
          12.2,
          18.5,
          6.3
        ],
        [
          "Trouble staying asleep, most days or every day",
          14.6,
          21.4,
          6.8
        ]
      ],
      "note": "Duration is effectively identical between the sexes. Both difficulty measures are far apart.",
      "sources": [
        "nchs-db559"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "sleep-by-age",
      "title": "Short sleep duration by age, US adults, 2024 (%)",
      "columns": [
        "Age group",
        "Slept under 7 hours"
      ],
      "rows": [
        [
          "18–34",
          27.2
        ],
        [
          "35–49",
          33.4
        ],
        [
          "50–64",
          34.5
        ],
        [
          "65 and older",
          27.2
        ]
      ],
      "note": "Short sleep peaks between 35 and 64, the years when people are most likely to have children at home, parents who need care and a demanding job at the same time.",
      "sources": [
        "nchs-db559"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "id": "nchs-db559",
      "title": "NCHS Data Brief No. 559: Short Sleep Duration and Sleep Difficulties Among Adults: United States, 2024",
      "publisher": "US National Center for Health Statistics, National Health Interview Survey",
      "url": "https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db559.htm",
      "covers": "2024 NHIS data, US adults aged 18 and over",
      "published": "2026-04-01",
      "retrieved": "2026-09-10"
    },
    {
      "id": "cdc-faststats-sleep",
      "title": "FastStats: Sleep in Adults",
      "publisher": "US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention",
      "url": "https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/data-research/facts-stats/adults-sleep-facts-and-stats.html",
      "covers": "Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2013–2022",
      "published": "2024-05-15",
      "retrieved": "2026-09-10"
    },
    {
      "id": "atus-2025-t1",
      "title": "Table 1. Time spent in primary activities and percent of the civilian population engaging in each activity, averages per day by sex, 2025 annual averages",
      "publisher": "U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey",
      "url": "https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm",
      "covers": "2025 annual averages",
      "published": "2026-06-25",
      "retrieved": "2026-09-10"
    }
  ],
  "methodology": [
    "Duration and difficulty figures come from NCHS Data Brief 559, based on the 2024 National Health Interview Survey, a large, nationally representative household survey. Short sleep is defined as less than 7 hours in a 24-hour period, the recommended minimum for adults.",
    "State figures come from CDC FastStats, drawing on the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. BRFSS and NHIS are different surveys with different methods, so the state range is not directly comparable with the national NHIS figure and is presented separately.",
    "Time-use figures come from the American Time Use Survey and measure something different again. See the note on why the two federal numbers disagree.",
    "Ratios and percentage-point gaps are derived from the published percentages, and the arithmetic is stated on each stat.",
    "Nothing here is modelled or adjusted. Percentages are reproduced as NCHS and CDC published them."
  ],
  "limitations": [
    "All of these figures are self-reported. People are poor estimators of how long they slept, and reported sleep is generally longer than measured sleep, so the true share of adults under 7 hours may be higher than 30.5%.",
    "The 0.2-point difference between men and women on short sleep is smaller than the survey’s sampling error. It should be read as \"no meaningful difference\", not as men sleeping slightly less.",
    "\"Trouble falling asleep\" and \"trouble staying asleep\" are self-described difficulties, not diagnoses. Women are also more likely than men to report symptoms in health surveys generally, which may account for part of the gap, though not obviously all of it.",
    "NHIS, BRFSS and ATUS measure sleep in three different ways and their numbers should never be combined into a single claim.",
    "These are cross-sectional snapshots. They show that women report more difficulty sleeping; they cannot say why, and nothing here identifies a cause.",
    "The survey records men and women only, and offers no data on nonbinary or transgender respondents."
  ],
  "updates": [
    {
      "date": "2026-09-10",
      "note": "First published, on NCHS Data Brief 559 (NHIS 2024), CDC FastStats (BRFSS 2022) and ATUS 2025."
    }
  ]
}