Thursday, October 8, 2015

Insomnia in Appalachia

Christopher Ingraham on a new map that shows where Americans suffer from insomnia:
You might assume that hectic, fast-paced lifestyles would lead to high rates of poor sleep in the nation's urban areas. But surprisingly, that's not necessarily what the data shows. Instead, the nation's biggest cluster of bad sleep ended up in the heart of Appalachia and in a cluster of counties in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee.

In some of these counties, 40 to 50 percent of the sample — and even higher, in some cases — reported difficulty sleeping on at least half of the days in the previous month. By contrast, the research also identified a number of "coldspots" when it comes to sleep deficiency — places where rates are below average. Wisconsin has a number of these counties, as does Northern Virginia. In many of these counties, rates of sleep difficulty fall below 20 percent.
Looks to me like a map of worried white people.

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