Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Is justice good for your sleep? (And therefore, good for your health?)

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Social Theory & Health Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper, we present an argument strengthening the view of Norman Daniels, Bruce Kennedy and Ichiro Kawachi that justice is good for one's health. We argue that the pathways through which social factors produce inequalities in sleep more strongly imply a unidirectional and non-voluntary causality than with most other public health issues. Specifically, we argue against the ‘voluntarism objection’ – an objection that suggests that adverse public health outcomes can be traced back to the free and voluntary choices of individual actors. Our argument proceeds along two lines: an empirical line and a conceptual line. We first show that much of the empirical research on sleep supports the view that those with fewer opportunities are those who have poorer sleep habits. We then argue that sleep-related decisions are not of the same nature as most other lifestyle choices, and therefore are not as easily susceptible to the voluntarism objection.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Theoretical variants of this objection stem from the literature on moral luck. At least one such central criticism can be found in G. A. Cohen's critique of Rawls. Other related concerns have been discussed by Saul Smilansky in his characterization of choice egalitarianism (see references below). More practical variants of this objection appear in commentary on the original essay. Marcia Angell, in her response to Daniels, Kennedy and Kawachi, writes that without controlling for socioeconomic status, ‘it is impossible to know whether the increased prevalence of asthma in the children of smokers is really because of passive smoking or because smokers are more likely to be poor, and poverty itself is associated with asthma for other reasons.’ Emmanuela Gakidou, Julio Frenk and Christopher Murray ask, ‘What about volition? How much of the distribution of health expectancy for a population is due to fully informed choices of individuals who have a taste for risky behavior? This seems like a very slippery slope. What choices affecting health are fully informed? Would we exclude the effects of tobacco on health expectancy because smoking is a choice?’ Some references include (Cohen, 1992, 1995, 1997; Angell, 2000; Gakidou et al, 2000; Smilansky, 2003).

  2. Selection effects, unlike voluntary preferences, call attention to both voluntary and involuntary third factors.

  3. A related objection – the ‘health begets wealth’ objection – is that people in poor health (either through voluntary or involuntary means) are less economically productive through direct and indirect pathways related to their health condition. Thus, there is a reversal of the relationship between social status and well-being. On account of space limitations, we cannot take up this objection here. Instead, we restrict our discussion to the voluntarism objection.

  4. If teens smoke because they love the taste of cigarettes, our response might lean in a particular direction. If they smoke because they feel that they will impress their peers, our response might lean in a different direction. With almost all other health issues, the prescription for a cure is unclear; should we work to improve education about the issue, distributing pamphlets and marking cigarette packages with skulls and crossbones? Or, should we strive to make it clear that cigarettes are unhip?

  5. What follows might be roundly criticized as highly speculative. But, it is only highly speculative if one gives it a psychological gloss. We are not arguing about the psychology of sleep. Indeed, we have little data on the psychology of sleep decisions. Rather, we are talking about the preconditions of sleep decisions – conditions that precede any psychological characterization of the decision. There is little question that we can be led to believe that we are doing something when we do not have control over what we are doing. We can, for instance, believe ourselves to be choosing to take a drug and yet, at the same time, be desiring the drug for some reason outside of our control. Or, we might, for instance, believe that we are very good at trajectory calculations if we can catch a baseball with impressive ease. Of course, catching baseballs is a somatic response that could not possibly involve an elaborate trajectory calculation.

  6. We agree with one reviewer that there is an unresolved tension between deterministic and voluntaristic accounts, particularly with regard to the social determinants of health literature. Indeed, this is largely what our argument aims to undercut. We are suggesting instead that the voluntarism objection is much less compelling when one introduces considerations about the social determinants of sleep.

References

  • Adams, J. (2006) Socioeconomic position and sleep quantity in UK adults. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 60 (3): 267–269.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Adler, N.E., Marmot, M., McEwen, B.S. and Stewart, J. (1999) Socioeconomic Status and Health in Industrial Nations: Social, Psychological, and Biological Pathways, Vol. 896. New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

    Google Scholar 

  • Angell, M. (2000) Pockets of poverty. Boston Review 25 (1): 4–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arber, S., Hislop, J., Bote, M. and Meadows, R. (2007) Gender roles and women's sleep in mid and later life: A quantitative approach. Sociological Research Online 12 (5).

  • Berkman, L.F. and Kawachi, I.O. (2000) Social Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biddle, J.E. and Hamermesh, D.S. (1990) Sleep and the allocation of time. The Journal of Political Economy 98 (5): 922–943.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyle, M.H., et al (2006) The influence of economic development level, household wealth and maternal education on child health in the developing world. Social Science & Medicine 63 (8): 2242–2254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, G.A. (1992) Incentives, inequality and community. In: G. Peterson, (ed.) The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. 13 Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, pp. 263–329.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, G.A. (1995) The pareto argument for inequality. In: E. Paul, (ed.) Contemporary Political and Social Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 160–165.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, G.A. (1997) Where the action is: On the site of distributive justice. Philosophy & Public Affairs 26: 3–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colten, H.R., Altevogt, B.M. and Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research (2006) Sleep Disorders and Sleep Deprivation: An Unmet Public Health Problem. Washington, DC: Institute of Medicine, National Academies Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daniels, N., Kennedy, B. and Kawachi, I. (1999) Why justice is good for our health: The social determinants of health inequalities. Daedalus 128 (4): 215–251.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daniels, N., Kennedy, B. and Kawachi, I. (2000) Justice is good for our health. Boston Review 25 (1): 4–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gakidou, E., Frenk, J. and Murray, C. (2000) A health agenda. Boston Review 25 (1): 4–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gellis, L.A., et al (2005) Socioeconomic status and insomnia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 114 (1): 111–118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hale, B. and Hale, L. (2009) Choosing to sleep. In: A. Dawson (ed.) The Philosophy of Public Health. A publication of the Society of Applied Philosophy, Surrey, England: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hale, L. (2005) Who has time to sleep? Journal of Public Health (Oxford, England) 27 (2): 205–211.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hale, L. and Do, D.P. (2007) Racial differences in self-report of sleep duration in a population-based study. Sleep 30 (9): 1092–1099.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hale, L., Peppard, P.E. and Young, T. (2007) Does the demography of sleep contribute to health disparities? In: D. Leger and S. R. Pandi-Perumal (eds.) Sleep Disorders: Their Impact on Public Health, 1st edn., Abingdon, Oxon: Informa Healthcare.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jefferson, C.D., et al (2005) Sleep hygiene practices in a population-based sample of insomniacs. Sleep 28 (5): 611–615.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kawachi, I. and Kennedy, B.P. (1999) Income inequality and health: Pathways and mechanisms. Health Services Research 34 (1: Part 2): 215–227.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kripke, D.F., Garfinkel, L., Wingard, D.L., Klauber, M.R. and Marler, M.R. (2002) Mortality associated with sleep duration and insomnia. Archives of General Psychiatry 59 (2): 131–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kripke, D.F., Simons, R.N., Garfinkel, L. and Hammond, E.C. (1979) Short and long sleep and sleeping pills. Is increased mortality associated? Archives of General Psychiatry 36 (1): 103–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lauderdale, D.S., et al (2006) Objectively measured sleep characteristics among early-middle-aged adults: The CARDIA study. American Journal of Epidemiology 164 (1): 5–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Macdonald, M. (1953) Sleeping and waking. Mind 62 (246): 202–215.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malcolm, N. (1956) Dreaming and skepticism. The Philosophical Review 65 (1): 14–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marmot, M. and Feeney, A. (1997) General explanations for social inequalities in health. IARC Scientific Publications 138: 207–228.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marmot, M.G. (2003) Understanding social inequalities in health. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 46 (3): S9–S23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marmot, M.G., et al (1991) Health inequalities among British civil servants: The Whitehall II study. Lancet 337 (8754): 1387–1393.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, P.J., Adler, N.E., Williams, D.R. and Jackson, J.S. (2002) Socioeconomic status and health: The role of sleep. Psychosomatic Medicine 64 (2): 337–344.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Patel, S.R., Palmer, L.J., Larkin, E.K., Jenny, N.S., White, D.P. and Redline, S. (2004) Relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and diurnal leptin rhythms. Sleep 27 (2): 235–239.

    Google Scholar 

  • Qureshi, A.I., Giles, W.H., Croft, J.B. and Bliwise, D.L. (1997) Habitual sleep patterns and risk for stroke and coronary heart disease: A 10-year follow-up from NHANES I. Neurology 48 (4): 904–911.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smilansky, S. (2003) Choice-egalitarianism and the paradox of the baseline. Analysis 63: 146–151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tamakoshi, A. and Ohno, Y. (2004) Self-reported sleep duration as a predictor of all-cause mortality: Results from the JACC study, Japan. Sleep 27 (1): 51–54.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilkinson, R.G. (1992) National mortality rates: The impact of inequality? American Journal of Public Health 82 (8): 1082–1084.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilkinson, R.G. (1996) Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality. London, New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wilkinson, R.G. and Pickett, K.E. (2008) Income inequality and socioeconomic gradients in mortality. American Journal of Public Health 98 (4): 699–704.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, B. (1981) Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, S.J. (2008) The sociological significance of sleep: Progress, problems, and prospects. Sociological Compass 2 (2): 639–653.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wingard, D.L. and Berkman, L.F. (1983) Mortality risk associated with sleeping patterns among adults. Sleep 6 (2): 102–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, T., Peppard, P.E. and Gottlieb, D.J. (2002) Epidemiology of obstructive sleep apnea: A population health perspective. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 165 (9): 1217–1239.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Studies and Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder 1333 Grandview Avenue, Box 488, Boulder, Colorado, 80309-0488, USA

    Benjamin Hale

  2. Graduate Program in Public Health, State University of New York-Stony Brook, HSC Level 3, Room 071, Stony Brook, 11794-8338, NY, USA

    Lauren Hale

Authors
  1. Benjamin Hale
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Lauren Hale
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin Hale.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Hale, B., Hale, L. Is justice good for your sleep? (And therefore, good for your health?). Soc Theory Health 7, 354–370 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2009.15

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2009.15

Keywords

Search

Navigation