The so-called ‘cost of living crisis’ has created a health inequalities ‘timebomb’ for HALF the poorest households

With the winter solstice bringing the longest night of the year, think tank the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) is warning that a chronic sleep deficit affecting people on low incomes could exacerbate existing and profound health inequalities affecting the UK. It is, of course, down to the so-called cost of living crisis.

Cost of living: impacting people’s sleep

The JRF has run a research project on poverty, which included looking at how deprivation affected people’s sleep. It found that:

• 46% of respondents in low-income households said the cost of living crisis had a negative impact on their sleep, according to the JRF’s latest cost of living tracker.
• Almost two-thirds (63%) of those who said they were going without the essentials such as food, clothing or toiletries between May and October 2023 reported that the cost of living crisis was negatively affecting their sleep.
• In contrast, 18% of respondents in households not going without essentials said their sleep was negatively affected by cost-of-living pressures.

Moreover, the latest findings from the JRF’s cost-of-living tracker raise fears of future health effects for the millions going without essentials such as food, cleaning products or the ability to keep warm.

• Over three quarters of respondents who reported a negative impact on their mental (77%) and physical health (80%).
• Respondents living in private or social rented housing (58% and 61%) were also almost twice as likely to have their sleep negatively affected than those who owned their homes outright (31%).

Wide-reaching effects

Grounded Voices, a research programme developed to better understand the day-to-day reality of people across the UK struggling to afford what they need, heard from a number of participants about the negative impact of the cost of living on their sleep.

One participant said:

If I’m worrying about money it will affect my sleep and how my day runs. It will affect how I take pride in myself, I might wake up in the morning and I’m not able to do like my makeup or my hair and things like that. It’s easy to get in a rut when you’re worried about money – everything else kind of is like outside noise.

Another added:

No question it has an impact on your mental health and your ability to process information and deal with other tasks, essentially because it dominates your thoughts.

You can sometimes run away with these negative thoughts and it can have a huge impact on life and long-term effects on your mental health.

‘Health inequalities are a shameful fact of life in the UK’

Maudie Johnson-Hunter, economist at the JRF who led on the research, said:

The cost of living has been high for a sustained period but recent years have also seen rising destitution and a fall in the real value of the benefits that are supposed to protect us when we fall on hard times. We have all experienced a bad night’s sleep and found it harder to get through the day afterwards, but for many families cold homes, worries about keeping food on the table and the lack of a secure income makes this an all too common occurrence.

Being on a low income already makes you more likely to experience worse mental and physical health than people who are comfortably off, and poor sleep is likely to compound this problem and make it harder to improve your health and that of your family.

Health inequalities are a shameful fact of life in the UK but the cost of living is adding a potential timebomb for the nation’s health. Official figures show that women in the least deprived areas are living more than nineteen years longer in good health than women in the poorest. This is wrong. Our social security system needs to be strengthened so that everyone is able to at least afford the essentials.

Lisa Artis, deputy CEO of the Sleep Charity, said:

These results come as no surprise. We have long been witness to rising levels of sleep poverty and sleep problems due the cost-of-living crisis. Amidst the silent struggles of those with the lowest incomes, sleep problems echo the harsh disparities of our world, where sleep should be a right and not a luxury. In the quiet desperation of restless nights, we find a call to action, urging us to build a society where the basic human right to peaceful sleep knows no economic boundaries.

Featured image via Rawpixel – Envato Elements