This Is the State Where People Get the Least Sleep

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 10, 9:30AM EST

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This Is the State Where People Get the Least Sleep — © Pollyana Ventura / Getty Images

Scientists have studied the need to sleep for decades. The primary theory is that the body and mind “recharge” while people are sleeping. Another question is how much sleep people need. That appears to vary by age. According to WebMD, infants need between 13 and 17 hours. People over 65 need 7 to 8 hours.

The amount of time people sleep does not only vary by age. In America, it also varies by where people live. To determine the state where people are getting the least sleep, 24/7 Tempo reviewed the share of adults reporting fewer than seven hours of sleep on average from the 2021 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (CHR) report.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 35.2% of American adults usually get less than the recommended amount of sleep, which the CDC says is seven hours of sleep over a 24-hour period. That is an elusive goal, and not getting enough sleep brings any number of risks. Lack of concentration while driving and mistakes made at work are among them.

A higher percentage of adults who report short sleep duration (less than seven hours of sleep over a 24-hour period) tend to reside in the southeastern and Midwestern United States and in states along the Appalachian Mountains. Those getting the most shut-eye tend to live in the Great Plains and Far West states.
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The state where people get the least sleep is Hawaii. Here are the details:

Adults reporting insufficient sleep: 43.2%
Adults reporting excessive drinking: 23.0% (eighth highest)
Adults reporting no physical activity: 19.6% (10th lowest)
Average number of unhealthy days per month: 3.4 days (second lowest)
Adult population: 1,115,685

To determine the states getting the most and the least sleep, 24/7 Tempo reviewed the share of adults reporting fewer than seven hours of sleep on average in each state from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program’s 2021 CHR report. Insufficient sleep figures published in the report are from 2018.

All other data came from the CHR, and figures are for the most recent year available. Population figures are one-year estimates for the 18 years and over age group from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2019.

Click here to see all the states where people are getting the most sleep.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.