Socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in sleep and cognitive and academic functioning across childhood and adolescence: a meta-analytic review

Study Objectives: Youth from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds and minoritized racial/ethnic groups face a greater risk for sleep disparities and poor cognitive/academic outcomes compared to their peers from higher socioeconomic status (SES) and majority racial/ethnic groups. This meta-analysis has two main objectives. First, it examined SES and racial/ethnic variables as moderators of the association between individual sleep parameters (i.e. objective duration, objective quality, subjective duration, subjective quality, schedule/chronobiology, and variability/consistency) and overall (i.e. combined assessment) cognitive/academic outcomes (e.g. memory, GPA). Second, it assessed sleep parameters and outcome domains as moderators of the association between sleep broadly (i.e. no distinction between various sleep parameters) and overall cognitive/academic outcomes to test whether the magnitude of the association varied across specific sleep parameters and outcome domains. Methods: Thirty-three studies comprising 410 effect sizes and 52854 participants were included. The meta-analysis was conducted per best practices. Results: For sleep and cognitive functioning, the overall weighted effect was r=0.11, 95% CI [0.08, 0.14], p <.001. Several significant differential associations between various sleep parameters and cognitive functioning emerged, showing that some parameters were stronger predictors. Academic performance yielded similar results, with an overall weighted effect size of r=0.14, 95% CI [0.10, 0.17], p <.001. SES and race/ethnicity also modified relations between certain sleep parameters and cognitive/academic functioning. Conclusions: The findings provide evidence for SES and race/ethnicity-related disparities, highlighting areas requiring further investigation. The discussion addresses methodological limitations in studying SES and race/ethnicity in relation to sleep and offers future research directions.