We show that sleep deprivation exerts strong negative effects on mothers? labour market performance. To isolate variations in maternal sleep, we exploit unique variations in child sleep disruption using a UK panel dataset that follows mother-child pairs through time. We find that sleeping one hour less per night on average significantly decreases maternal labour force participation, the number of hours worked and household income. We identify one mechanism driving the effects, namely the influence of maternal sleep on selection into full-time versus part-time work. Increased schedule flexibility for mothers with sufficient tenure mitigates the negative effects of sleep deprivation. ? 2019 Elsevier B.V.

---

1 January 2020

---

Journal of Health Economics 692020

---

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102258

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167629619301985?via%3Dihub

This Journal article is published under the centre's Education programme, Labour programme.