Obtaining the optimal sleep duration is essential for health and well-being (Cappuccio et al., 2010a; Itani et al., 2017; Jike et al., 2018). However, over one-third of Americans do not attain optimal sleep duration for healthy functioning (7–8 h per 24-h period; Sheehan et al., 2019). Compared to those racialized as Non-Hispanic (NH) White, those racialized as NH Black or Hispanic are significantly less likely to get the optimal amount of sleep (Petrov and Lichstein 2016; Saelee et al., 2023; Sheehan et al., 2019). Racial/ethnic disparities in sleep duration contribute to social and health inequities more broadly, as individuals who experience short sleep (less than 7 h) or long sleep (9 h or more) are at increased risk of low work productivity (Yang et al., 2018), poor executive function (Wilckens et al., 2014), dysfunctional parenting (McQuillan et al., 2019), physical and mental health problems (Buxton and Marcelli 2010; Jike et al., 2018), and death (Cappuccio et al., 2010b). The determinants of sleep duration are conceptualized as increasingly multifaceted (Johnson et al., 2016). Yet, even as the determinants of sleep duration are well understood, the extent to which exposure to neighborhood poverty may influence sleep duration across the life course remains less clear.

While obtaining optimal sleep is crucial across the life course, it may be particularly important in emerging adulthood, which generally spans the ages of 18 through 29 years, when many Americans begin to establish an adult life characterized by relatively consistent health behaviors, work, marriage, time patterns, and parenthood (Arnett et al. 2014). This is also a time in the life course when racial/ethnic trajectories in health and health behaviors begin to diverge (Walsemann et al., 2017; Walsemann et al. 2016). Although sleep patterns change considerably throughout childhood, sleep patterns established in emerging adulthood remain relatively stable throughout adulthood (Kocevska et al., 2021). Further, while racial/ethnic disparities in sleep duration emerge as early as infancy (Ash et al., 2019), recent research has found emerging adulthood to be a period where sleep duration trajectory disparities further expand (Saelee et al., 2023). Thus, emerging adulthood is an important period to understand sleep duration and disparities.

Sleep duration is influenced by a host of individual and contextual factors (Li et al., 2021a; Troxel et al., 2017). Increasingly, however, researchers have emphasized that contextual factors, particularly neighborhood poverty, contribute beyond individual characteristics to suboptimal sleep duration (Kim et al., 2022; Mayne et al., 2021; Sheehan et al., 2018; Tomfohr-Madsen et al., 2020; Xiao and Hale 2018). Impoverished neighborhoods have greater light, air, and noise pollution, fewer spaces and opportunities to exercise, less access to healthy foods, farther distances from work, and lower perceived safety, all of which may contribute to suboptimal sleep directly or indirectly (e.g., through increased psychological distress; Hill et al., 2009; Hoffmann et al. 2003; Hunter and Hayden 2018; Johnson et al., 2015; Mayne et al., 2021; Troxel et al., 2017). However, the findings are not unanimous, as one cross-sectional study found that neighborhood socioeconomic status was not connected to sleep when individual characteristics were accounted for (Desantis et al., 2013) and these mixed findings could be due to measurement related issues such as not accounting for exposure to neighborhood poverty.

Indeed, knowledge regarding how neighborhoods influence sleep remains limited in two important ways. First, most studies have employed cross-sectional designs, and accordingly the influence of long-term exposure to neighborhood poverty on sleep duration remains obscured (see Mayne et al., 2021 for a review). Because cross-sectional studies measure neighborhood poverty at a single point in time, they fail to capture differences in residents' histories of exposure to neighborhood poverty and the attendant risk factors (Do 2009). This is particularly problematic from adolescence to emerging adulthood, when residential mobility traditionally peaks as many Americans transition from their parents’ homes to separate residences (Lippert et al., 2017). That is, with cross-sectional research, it is difficult to know the duration of exposure to neighborhood poverty. Sleep is an especially important to study longitudinally, as it is influenced by both immediate exposures (e.g., moving to a noisy neighborhood) and long-term exposures (e.g., adjusting time/sleep patterns to a neighborhood). Second, little is known regarding whether long-term exposure to neighborhood poverty and its association with sleep duration varies by race/ethnicity, even as American neighborhoods remain highly segregated and the influence of neighborhood characteristics on health can vary markedly by race/ethnicity (Grigsby-Toussaint et al., 2010; Massey 2016). That is, neighborhood poverty exposure may be important for understanding racial/ethnic inequities in sleep duration specifically and how neighborhood poverty may structure health differently across subpopulations more broadly. To extend past research, we use a prospective nationally representative sample to analyze multiple measures of long-term exposure to neighborhood poverty from adolescence to emerging adulthood in relation to self-reported sleep duration. Further we systematically document racial/ethnic differences in the observed relationships, paying close attention to how best to measure the exposure to neighborhood poverty in relation to sleep duration.

The influence of neighborhood characteristics on health and likely sleep duration generally depends on the duration of exposure to the neighborhood environment (Do 2009; Spring 2018). That is, the ways in which neighborhood poverty influences health and sleep duration are generally not instantaneous, but rather are the cumulative result of years of exposure to more proximate risk factors (e.g., light exposure, temporal demands such as longer commutes, lack of access to health food, etc.). Living briefly in an impoverished neighborhood would likely have minimal impacts on individuals’ sleep (Spring 2018), whereas long-term residents adapt their behaviors, including their sleeping patterns to the surrounding area. The greater exposure to health or sleep risks or insults is often known as “cumulative disadvantage” (Ferraro and Kelley-Moore 2003). And cumulative disadvantage seems likely to extend to how neighborhoods may influence sleep duration.

The timing of exposure to neighborhood poverty also matters. According to what Lippert et al. (2017) describes in their “sensitive insult model,” exposure to neighborhood poverty earlier in the life course may harm subsequent health and sleep duration more than later exposure. For instance, research has indicated that behaviors and socioeconomic exposures from adolescence can influence sleep in adulthood (Tomfohr et al. 2010). In general, adolescence is a sensitive period (Umberson et al. 2010) not only for subsequent but also for health, a time when exposures may set in motion lifelong trajectories of poor health (Aneshensel and Sucoff 1996; Gilman et al., 2003) and sleep duration (Walsemann et al., 2017).

The sequence of moving into or out of impoverished neighborhoods is also potentially important for sleep duration. The bulk of the evidence suggests that either entering or remaining in high-poverty neighborhoods is associated with worse health (Sivertsen et al., 2017) than leaving a high-poverty neighborhood (Cantu et al., 2019; Lippert 2016; Lippert et al., 2017). Accordingly, it may be especially stressful for an emerging adult to enter an impoverished neighborhood from an advantaged one, given the sudden adjustment to neighborhood physical and temporal demands and the psychological impacts of falling in status (Morrissey and Peter, 2020), which may be relevant for sleep duration. Additionally, previous exposure during a sensitive period may mute the benefits of moving, later on, from a high-poverty to a low-poverty neighborhood.

Few studies have examined different ways of measuring the influence of long-term neighborhood poverty exposure on sleep duration. A notable exception was a study of middle-aged-to-old Americans that showed that declines in neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) over time were related to increased risk of reporting very short sleep among women, while increases in neighborhood SES were associated with increased risk of reporting long sleep among men (Xiao and Hale 2018). Other work indicated that consistent exposure to historical neighborhood poverty may affect sleep duration: children who grew up in neighborhoods where poverty was historically low or moderate were less likely to get insufficient sleep than their peers in historically high-poverty neighborhoods (Sheehan et al., 2018). However, we know of no research that has investigated long-term exposure to neighborhood poverty—measured in multiple ways—from adolescence to emerging adulthood, in relation to subsequent sleep duration. We begin to address this gap in the literature by examining the ideal specification (i.e., coding) of neighborhood poverty exposure to reported sleep duration, with the objective of understanding which specification of neighborhood poverty exposure best specifies the importance of the duration, timing, and sequence of exposure in relation to sleep duration.

The influence of exposure to neighborhood poverty throughout adolescence and young adulthood on sleep duration may also vary by race/ethnicity. In the United States, neighborhoods, and neighborhood poverty, remain highly segregated by race/ethnicity (Massey 2016), a process stemming from structural racism that has operated through redlining, foreclosures, and differential interest rates based on race/ethnicity (Hall et al. 2015; Kravitz-Wirtz and Nicole, 2016; Williams et al. 2003). Segregation likely has real consequences for structuring sleep duration: neighborhoods with a high proportion of racial/ethnic minority people generally have considerably higher levels of poverty and the attendant risk factors for worse sleep discussed above (Do et al. 2017). Indeed, Black adults have higher risk of living in impoverished neighborhoods and reporting short as well as long sleep than do White adults (Hale and Phuong Do, 2007; Kamp Dush et al., 2018; Lauderdale et al., 2006; Nunes et al., 2008; Petrov and Lichstein 2016; Quillian 2003). Yet, less is known about whether the associations between neighborhood poverty exposure (in general, or in various specifications) and sleep duration vary by race/ethnicity, even as there is increasing acknowledgement that certain exposures, such as neighborhood environments, have different impacts on the health of different racialized groups (DeAngelis and Reed, 2022; Grigsby-Toussaint et al., 2010).

Importantly, the impact of exposure to neighborhood poverty on sleep duration may be especially salient for White adults, whose health, longevity, and sleep duration tends to be more sensitive to socioeconomic status than is true for minoritized individuals (Farmer and Ferraro 2005; Hummer and Hernandez 2013; Sheehan et al. 2020). White adults may be particularly vulnerable to poor sleep in high-poverty neighborhoods in part because they are especially likely to derive their self-worth from their socioeconomic standing (Thomas Tobin et al., 2021). That is, White adults in impoverished neighborhoods may feel that they are failing at “being White” (Hartigan 1999; McDermott 2006), and this sense of failure may affect their sleep.

Other research has suggested that while high-SES environments are beneficial to health for White adults, they are less beneficial, null, or even detrimental to health and sleep for Black and Hispanic adults (Farmer and Ferraro 2005; Kimbro et al., 2008; Pearson 2008; Sheehan et al., 2020). Scholars have speculated that this is due in part to the fact that Black adults experience higher levels of discrimination in higher SES environments (Assari 2018a, 2018b; Assari and Bazargan 2019; DeAngelis and Reed, 2022). The Shine Sociocultural and Structural Framework of Race/Ethnicity and Health asserts that predominately White spaces (e.g., institutions, neighborhoods, and organizations; Anderson 2015; Pearson 2008) require Black people to engage in high-effort coping behaviors, and this may disrupt sleep duration (Sheehan et al., 2020). This pattern has also been found in Hispanic adults (Sheehan et al., 2020). Additionally, Black people and Hispanic people may also be more resilient to high poverty areas than White people (Louie et al., 2021). Thus, given past research, we anticipate that NH White adults’ sleep duration will be more sensitive to cumulative exposure to neighborhood poverty—and to the timing and sequence of exposure—than will the sleep of NH Black and Hispanic respondents. However, the best fitting specification of neighborhood poverty exposure in relation to sleep duration likely would not differ by racial/ethnic group, given exposure to the more proximate pathways through which neighborhoods influence sleep duration.

The current study has three major research questions. First, are different specifications of exposure to neighborhood poverty during adolescence and emerging adulthood (e.g., the duration, timing, and sequence of exposure) associated with sleep duration in adulthood? Second, do these associations vary across NH White respondents, NH Black respondents, and Hispanic respondents? Third, what is the best way to measure the influence of neighborhood poverty exposure for each racial/ethnic group?