These Are the Sleepiest Countries in the World—How Does Your Shut-Eye Compare?

Are you living in one of the sleepiest countries in the world? Where you tuck yourself in at night may impact whether you are a loud-and-proud eight-hours-a-night sleep professional, or if instead, you find that the hours pass you by in a twilight blur with slumber just out of reach. We’re all aware of the health and productivity impacts of not snoozing enough, but as a result of busy modern lives, sometimes a great night between the sheets isn’t always possible. If you find yourself tossing and turning as the world sleeps around you—you wouldn't be alone. The difference between the average amount of sleep reported in the sleepiest countries in the world and the most rested is one hour and 25 minutes. While that isolated figure may not sound like much, that ostensibly insignificant amount of time adds up to a little over 19 days worth of sleep over the course of a year.In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared insufficient sleep a public health epidemic. And while instances are rare, the Japanese have a term for the fatal consequences: Karōshi, covering excessive work hours and high job pressure and, in turn, a lack of rest and sleep.To reveal who’s the most rested of them all, the World Economic Forum organized data from Sleep Cycle, an app used around the world that tracks how much shut-eye people are achieving.Tokyo's famed Shibuya Scramble crossing hosts large crowds of passers-by throughout the course of the night. GettyIt may come as little surprise to residents and travelers who’ve experienced the laid-back way of life that New Zealand claims the title of the most rested country in the world. The average Kiwi gets more than seven and a half hours of sleep a night. Thanks to factors like the country's low light pollution and relatively sparse population density, the stage for a good night's sleep is well set. As the World Economic Forum’s results demonstrate, the Kiwis are joined by residents of European countries Britain, Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium, plus its Oceanian neighbor Australia, over the seven-and-a-half-hours mark.In the middle of the pack, with the average night’s sleep clocking in at between six hours and 45 minutes and seven hours, are Thailand, Argentina, Taiwan, and Singapore.Right at the bottom of the bunch is Japan, a perhaps unsurprising candidate due to circumstances like the nation's long working hours and commensurately lengthy commuting times, as reported by the ⁠NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute. In Japan, the average night’s sleep lasts a little over six hours and 15 minutes—a stat closely followed by Saudi Arabia and South Korea, making them the sleepiest countries in the world.The cumulative effect of compromised productivity in the world’s worst countries for sleep adds up, too. According to the Rand Corporation, the US loses the equivalent of around 1.2 million working days per year due to the workforce not getting enough sleep, while even the UK and Germany, despite their comparatively high sleep scores, lose around 200,000 good working days.On an individual level, there's no one magic number for how many hours of sleep you should aim to get per night, with recommendations fluctuating with age to meet a demographics' metabolic needs. The CDC recommends more broadly that adults between 18 and 60 years get seven or more hours of sleep, while that range tightens to seven to nine hours for the 61 to 64 years age group, but those numbers are only about half of the recommended 14 to 17 hours for newborns and toddlers. For advice on how to getting in some shut-eye, even as you're on the go, check out our guide on how to sleep on a plane.This article was originally published in Condé Nast Traveller UK.