Sleeping behaviors are determined by lockdown and not work-from-home arrangements.

Lockdowns and work-from-home arrangements became abrupt realities for people at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, considering the case of Singapore, we study how peoples' sleep behaviors-which are closely linked to their mental health-varied as a result. However, different from most studies, this paper uses household electricity consumption data to estimate the sleeping behaviors of nearly 10,000 households in the city-state. With this, we study how the residents' daily sleep durations changed dynamically during the lockdown and afterwards when restrictions were progressively eased, and show their strong connection to major changes in the public health policy and current events during this period. Our results add to the evidence for the stress endured by the populace during the lockdown; we find that sleep durations for all demographics, while higher than before the lockdown, became more fluctuating across days. A major, and surprising, finding is that it was the lockdown that determined the residents' sleeping duration, rather than simply working-from-home arrangements. That is, the sleeping durations largely reverted back to their pre-pandemic levels when the lockdown was lifted-with small variations based on demographic factors-although a vast majority of people continued to work from home. This highlights the resilience of the daily routines of the Singapore populace. While providing insights into how a pandemic influences the dynamics of urban sleep patterns, our finding also has broader implications regarding the efficiency of the workforce, suggesting that concerns about asynchronous work routines and productivity may be overblown.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)