A 12-year Finnish study found that people classified as evening types had about 1.7 times the hazard of receiving a first disability pension as morning types. That is a relative comparison—not a 70-percentage-point increase in an individual’s chance of receiving a pension, and not evidence that being a night owl causes disability.
What the study found
Researchers followed 5,679 non-retired participants from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. The cohort includes people born in northern Finland in 1966. Participants reported their chronotype at age 46 in 2012, and researchers used registers to identify first disability-pension awards from 2012 through 2023, when participants were up to age 57. The study was published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine on September 30, 2026. Read the study abstract.
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Compared with morning types, evening types had an unadjusted hazard ratio of 1.72 among men (95% confidence interval 1.04–2.83) and 1.73 among women (95% CI 1.22–2.46). In plain language, the estimated rate of a first pension award during follow-up was roughly 70% higher for evening types in each sex. The confidence intervals show uncertainty around those estimates; the men’s interval, in particular, is wide.
What “70% more likely” does—and does not—mean
A hazard ratio compares the rate at which an outcome occurs over time between groups. It does not mean that an individual night owl has a 70% chance of receiving a pension, or that their probability rises by 70 percentage points. The result is a group-level relative comparison over the study’s follow-up period.
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Among evening types, 8.3% of men and 12.1% of women received a first disability pension during follow-up. Those are proportions within the evening-type groups, not the increase compared with morning types. The abstract does not provide the corresponding morning-type proportions, so the absolute difference between the groups cannot be calculated from the reported figures.
How strong is the evidence?
The association persisted after socioeconomic adjustment
The authors report that adjustment for socioeconomic factors did not attenuate the association. However, the abstract does not list the fully adjusted hazard ratios, so the precise adjusted estimates cannot be compared with the unadjusted figures above.
The study does not show that chronotype causes disability
This was an observational cohort study, not an experiment. It establishes an association in this Finnish group; it cannot establish that being an evening type caused pension awards, identify the mechanism, or show that changing sleep habits would prevent them. The study also does not give an individual risk prediction.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteResearchers measured chronotype with a short Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire at age 46. In a subset of 5,130 participants, questionnaire results were compared with polygenic scores for morningness measured at age 31. That comparison supports the chronotype measure’s validity, but it does not resolve the question of causation.
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Who the findings apply to
The findings concern non-retired middle-aged adults in one Finnish birth cohort, not all night owls or workers in every country. Evening types made up 9.7% of men and 12.4% of women in the study. During follow-up, 135 men (5.2%) and 249 women (8.1%) received a first disability pension across the cohort as a whole. These cohort-wide figures are not estimates of risk for a particular person.
A separate 2021 analysis of this cohort looked at poor work ability at age 46 and disability pensions over 2013–2016. It was a shorter, earlier analysis and should not be treated as the source of the 2026 study’s 12-year estimate. See the earlier study.
What readers should take away
The study reports a meaningful association: evening types had about 1.7 times the unadjusted hazard of a first disability-pension award compared with morning types. It does not establish a cause, quantify the absolute difference from morning types, or show that a specific lifestyle change or product reduces pension risk. The authors call for further research and action to support health and work ability among evening types.
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