Is Poverty the Root of Insomnia? What We Have Learned About Sleeplessness, Economic Insecurity, and Life After AI
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There is a question we have been thinking about for more than a decade:
Why do so many people lie awake at night?
There are many answers.
Stress.
Anxiety.
Work.
Relationships.
Health.
Screens.
Loneliness.
An irregular schedule.
And sometimes, simply, the inability to switch off.
But after years of observing people who struggle with sleep, we began to notice something that is easy to overlook.
For many people, the problem does not begin in the bedroom.
It begins during the day.
And sometimes, it begins with something much more fundamental:
money.
Not because every person who struggles financially becomes insomniac.
And not because every person with insomnia is poor.
But because economic insecurity changes the way a person experiences the future.
When you have enough money, tomorrow is usually a problem for tomorrow.
When you don't, tomorrow can enter your bedroom tonight.
Poverty Does Not Always Keep You Awake. Uncertainty Does.
Imagine two people lying in the same bed at 11:30 PM.
The room is dark.
The lights are off.
The phone is on the nightstand.
Both are physically tired.
But one person thinks:
Tomorrow is another day.
The other thinks:
How am I going to make more money?
How will I pay the rent?
How will I pay for my child's education?
What if my company cuts my position?
What if my salary doesn't increase?
What if prices keep rising?
What if I lose my job?
What can I do differently?
Should I start a business?
Should I learn something new?
Should I find another job?
Should I sell something online?
Should I use AI?
Could I make money from the internet?
Could I change my life?
The body may be lying in bed.
But the mind is still at work.
This is why we believe that economic insecurity deserves to be taken much more seriously in the conversation about sleep.
The evidence is not merely philosophical.
A nationally representative U.S. study of more than 7,000 older adults found that people experiencing greater economic hardship had approximately twice the odds of reporting insomnia, even after researchers adjusted for health conditions, anxiety, depression, age, gender and education.
Another U.S. study examining material hardship found associations between employment instability, financial problems, housing instability, food insecurity and poorer sleep outcomes.
And during the COVID-19 period, a nationally representative study of U.S. adults found that financial hardship was associated with greater sleep disturbance severity.
The relationship is therefore not simply:
poor people sleep badly.
It is more complicated:
economic insecurity creates stress, uncertainty, cognitive load and fear about the future—and these conditions can interfere with sleep.
Americans Already Know That Money Is Stressful
This is not merely a theory developed by COZHOM.
The American Psychological Association has been measuring financial stress in America for years.
In its 2015 Stress in America survey, 72% of Americans reported feeling stressed about money at least some of the time during the previous month, while 22% reported extreme money stress.
In another APA survey, money and work repeatedly appeared among Americans' most significant sources of stress.
And stress has a very intimate relationship with sleep.
An APA survey found that 43% of American adults reported that stress had caused them to lie awake at night during the previous month.
This creates a cycle:
Financial pressure → stress → mental activity → poor sleep → reduced energy → poorer performance → more financial pressure.
The bedroom becomes the final place where the unresolved problems of the day arrive.
The Problem Is Not Always That People Spend Too Much
There is another uncomfortable reality.
Sometimes people work hard.
They are responsible.
They get up every morning.
They go to work.
They pay their bills.
They take care of their families.
And yet they still feel that they are falling behind.
The Federal Reserve's latest household survey shows why this feeling cannot simply be dismissed as personal irresponsibility.
In 2024, 60% of U.S. adults said changes in the prices they paid compared with the prior year had made their financial situation worse. The majority had changed their behavior in response to higher prices.
The Federal Reserve also found that only 63% of adults said they could cover a hypothetical $400 emergency expense using cash or its equivalent. And 30% of adults said they could not cover three months of expenses after losing their main source of income, even by borrowing, using savings or selling assets.
These numbers matter because financial insecurity is not simply about whether someone owns a luxury car.
It is about something much more basic:
How safe do I feel about tomorrow?
And Then AI Arrived
For generations, the basic economic bargain was relatively simple:
You have a skill.
You exchange your time and labor for money.
You become more experienced.
You become more valuable.
You earn more.
You support your family.
You save.
You retire.
It was never a perfect system.
But it was understandable.
Now something fundamentally different is happening.
Machines are beginning to perform cognitive work.
Not just physical work.
Not just repetitive factory work.
Cognitive work.
Writing.
Programming.
Translation.
Design.
Customer support.
Research.
Data analysis.
Marketing.
Legal document review.
Financial analysis.
And increasingly, tasks that previously required years of professional training.
This is not speculation about some distant science-fiction world.
It is already happening.
Stanford's 2025 AI Index reported that 78% of organizations surveyed said they were using AI in 2024, up from 55% in 2023. The same report summarized empirical studies involving more than 200,000 professionals that found productivity gains ranging from roughly 10% to 45% in different settings.
Anthropic's real-world Economic Index has similarly found AI use concentrated in actual workplace tasks, with augmentation initially more common than automation, while some occupations and tasks are already being affected much more heavily than others.
The question is therefore no longer:
Will AI change work?
It already has.
The more important question is:
How much will it change the economic value of human labor?
The Coming Disruption Is Bigger Than One Technology
The International Monetary Fund estimates that almost 40% of jobs globally are exposed to AI, rising to approximately 60% in advanced economies. Exposure does not mean job loss; some jobs will be augmented while others may experience reduced labor demand. But the scale of potential transformation is enormous.
The International Labour Organization's 2025 analysis is similarly careful: about one in four workers globally are in occupations with some degree of generative-AI exposure, but most jobs are more likely to be transformed than completely eliminated because human input remains necessary in many tasks.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, based on employer expectations, projects that by 2030 roughly 170 million jobs could be created while 92 million could be displaced, producing a net increase of 78 million jobs—but with enormous occupational churn along the way.
McKinsey estimates that activities representing around 30% of hours currently worked in the U.S. economy could be automated by 2030, and that almost 12 million U.S. workers may need to transition from declining occupations to growing ones.
These numbers do not tell us exactly what the future will look like.
But they tell us something important:
The structure of human work is changing.
And it is changing faster than most people have psychologically prepared for.
The AI Singularity: We Don't Know When It Comes
There is a temptation to give this transformation a dramatic date.
The Singularity.
AGI.
Superintelligence.
Mass unemployment.
But serious research does not give us a scientifically established date when a "singularity" will arrive.
Anyone who tells you they know the exact year is making a prediction, not reporting a scientific fact.
What we can observe is something more concrete.
AI systems are becoming more capable.
The cost of using them is falling.
Businesses are investing heavily in them.
Organizations are integrating them into real workflows.
And the boundary between "human work" and "machine work" is moving.
Stanford's AI Index documents rapid progress across difficult benchmarks, growing business adoption and record levels of investment.
That is enough.
We do not need to know the exact date of a singularity to understand the direction of travel.
John Maynard Keynes Saw This Problem Nearly a Century Ago
In 1930, long before computers, artificial intelligence or the internet, John Maynard Keynes wrote about what he called "technological unemployment."
He described it as unemployment arising when technological efficiency advances faster than society can find new uses for human labor.
His insight was remarkably early.
Technology can make society richer while simultaneously making the existing economic role of some workers less necessary.
That distinction is crucial.
A more productive economy does not automatically mean that every individual worker becomes more secure.
Technology can create abundance.
But the transition can still be painful.
And the transition can be especially painful for people who do not own the technology, the capital or the businesses benefiting from it.
The Future May Be Wealthier—and More Unequal at the Same Time
This is one of the contradictions of the AI era.
AI can make us more productive.
AI can lower the cost of producing information.
AI can help one person do the work that previously required a team.
AI can allow a small business to compete with a much larger company.
AI can create entirely new industries.
All of that is positive.
But productivity gains do not automatically distribute themselves equally.
The IMF explicitly warns that AI could deepen inequality even as it raises productivity and incomes overall.
That means the central economic question of the AI era may not simply be:
How much can AI produce?
It may become:
Who owns the productivity?
And for ordinary people, there is an even more immediate question:
How do I participate in the new economy instead of simply being displaced by it?
This Is Where COZHOM Became Uncomfortable
This question eventually came back to us.
COZHOM was never intended to be an economic platform.
It was created around a much quieter idea:
The 11PM Holy Bedtime Ritual.
Three minutes.
Four steps.
Every night.
Apply.
Breathe.
Massage.
Listen.
A small ritual that creates a boundary between the day and the night.
We wanted COZHOM to feel beautiful.
Quiet.
Sacred.
Refined.
Almost timeless.
We wanted to create a brand that people could put beside their bed without feeling that they had bought another piece of commercial noise.
And then we started asking ourselves an uncomfortable question.
Should COZHOM also help people make money?
Our first reaction was no.
It felt wrong.
It might make the brand look cheaper.
It might make COZHOM feel like another affiliate program.
Another "side hustle."
Another company telling people:
Buy this product and make money.
We worried that the economic proposition would diminish the emotional and aesthetic value of the brand.
So we thought about it for a long time.
And eventually we arrived at a different conclusion.
Perhaps a Brand Should Not Protect Its Image at the Expense of Its Purpose
There is a point where brand positioning becomes vanity.
If we make COZHOM more beautiful but less useful to people, what have we really accomplished?
If we protect the brand's premium image but ignore the economic anxiety of the people who buy from us, have we understood the world they live in?
And if AI is genuinely changing the structure of work, perhaps a company does not need to pretend that this problem does not exist.
We cannot solve unemployment.
We cannot stop AI.
We cannot predict the exact future of work.
And we certainly cannot promise anyone financial independence.
But perhaps we can create one small additional path.
So We Chose to Experiment
We decided that COZHOM could have another layer.
Not instead of the ritual.
Not instead of the product.
Not instead of the brand.
Alongside it.
If someone genuinely likes COZHOM, they can become a customer first.
Use the ritual.
Every night.
For three months.
Not three days.
Not one week.
Not after watching one advertisement.
Three months.
Because we believe that if you have used something for three months and still genuinely want to recommend it to someone you care about, your recommendation means something.
At that point, we allow you to share your personal COZHOM referral link.
When someone purchases through your link, you can receive at least 10% commission on the completed purchase, according to the applicable program terms.
You do not have to do it.
You do not have to sell anything.
You do not have to recruit people.
You do not have to promise anyone anything.
You simply share something you genuinely use.
And if people choose to buy it, you participate in the value you helped create.
Why Three Months?
Because we do not want to turn every customer into a salesperson.
We want to create a filter.
Three months is long enough to ask a simple question:
Do I actually believe in this?
If the answer is no, don't share it.
If the answer is yes, perhaps share it with someone you love.
Your mother.
Your wife.
Your husband.
Your sister.
Your friend.
Someone who stays awake at night.
Someone who works too much.
Someone whose mind never seems to stop.
Someone who is trying to build a better life.
And perhaps that person becomes a customer.
And perhaps they share it too.
Over time, a small economic network can emerge naturally from genuine product use.
Not because we forced it.
But because people found something worth sharing.
We Do Not Know How Much Money This Can Create
And this is important.
We don't know.
Perhaps $300 every month.
Perhaps $30,000 every month.
Perhaps nothing.
We will never promise a particular income.
We cannot.
Income depends on how many people someone reaches, how many choose to purchase, how often they share, and many other factors.
The point is not to promise wealth.
The point is to create another possibility.
A possibility that did not exist before.
Maybe the Future of Work Will Become More Personal
For most of the industrial age, economic value was concentrated inside organizations.
You worked for a company.
The company owned the factory.
The company owned the distribution network.
The company owned the customer relationship.
The company paid you.
The internet began to change this.
Social media changed it further.
The creator economy changed it again.
AI may accelerate the process dramatically.
A single person can now write, design, research, advertise, translate, produce video, build software and operate a small business with tools that would have required an entire team twenty years ago.
This does not mean everyone will become successful.
It means the minimum scale required to participate in economic activity is falling.
That matters.
Because if AI reduces the value of some forms of human labor, one possible response is not simply:
Work harder.
Another response is:
Find new ways to create and participate in value.
We Want to Be Part of That Experiment
COZHOM is not going to solve the future of work.
We are a small company.
We make a bedtime ritual.
We make products for the night.
We create music.
We tell stories.
We work with botanicals.
We think about sleep, darkness, silence and the strange hours when the rest of the world has gone quiet.
But perhaps that is precisely why we should talk about this.
Because the future of work eventually becomes a question about the future of people's nights.
If someone spends the entire day working to survive, and then spends the night worrying about how to earn more tomorrow, when does that person actually live?
If the day belongs to work,
and the night belongs to anxiety,
then where does life belong?
The Night Should Not Become Another Workplace
This is where our philosophy becomes important.
We do not want COZHOM to tell people:
Work harder at night.
Quite the opposite.
We want to help draw a line.
The day is over.
You have done enough for today.
Tomorrow will come.
But it is not here yet.
The economic opportunity we are experimenting with should exist around the product, not inside the ritual itself.
The three minutes before sleep should remain three minutes.
Apply.
Breathe.
Massage.
Listen.
Then let the day go.
Maybe Economic Security and Sleep Are More Connected Than We Think
A person who is financially secure does not automatically sleep well.
And a person who is financially struggling does not automatically sleep badly.
Human beings are much more complicated than that.
But economic security can change the number of problems waiting for you when the lights go out.
It can change whether a medical bill feels catastrophic.
Whether losing one paycheck feels survivable.
Whether a broken car means inconvenience or disaster.
Whether your child's future feels possible.
Whether tomorrow feels like an opportunity or a threat.
This is why we believe poverty is not simply about having less money.
Poverty can mean having less margin.
Less margin for mistakes.
Less margin for emergencies.
Less margin for rest.
Less margin for imagination.
And sometimes, less margin for sleep.
The AI Era Will Ask Us a New Question
For centuries, the question was:
How can I work hard enough to earn a living?
The AI era may increasingly ask:
What kind of value can I create that remains meaningful when machines can do more and more of the work?
There will not be one answer.
Some people will build companies.
Some will become creators.
Some will work with AI.
Some will care for other human beings.
Some will build physical things.
Some will create art.
Some will teach.
Some will invent.
Some will own businesses.
Some will work fewer hours.
Some will have several sources of income instead of one.
And some will simply find a small way to participate.
We think all of these possibilities deserve respect.
We Choose to Embrace AI
We do not believe the answer is to fight AI.
AI is not going away.
Nor should it.
The same technology that threatens some jobs can give an individual extraordinary new capabilities.
A person who could not afford a marketing department can now use AI to research a market.
A person who could not afford a designer can create prototypes.
A person who could not afford a programmer can build software.
A person who could not afford a large company can reach customers around the world.
The transition will be painful.
Some people will lose jobs.
Some professions will shrink.
Some skills will lose economic value.
New skills will become valuable.
New businesses will emerge.
And some people will struggle to make the transition.
That is precisely why we should begin experimenting now.
COZHOM Is One Small Experiment
We are not presenting our referral program as the answer to unemployment.
It isn't.
We are not presenting COZHOM as a guaranteed source of income.
It isn't.
We are not promising financial independence.
We cannot.
We are simply asking a smaller question:
Can a product that people genuinely use every night also become a small economic opportunity for the people who genuinely believe in it?
We don't know yet.
But we are willing to try.
And if one person earns enough from sharing COZHOM to pay a bill, that matters.
If another person uses the income to buy groceries, that matters.
If someone eventually builds something much larger from the opportunity, that matters too.
And if someone earns nothing but discovers a meaningful nighttime ritual that helps them create a healthier boundary between work and life, that matters as well.
Perhaps the Most Valuable Thing Is Not the Money
Money is important.
We should not romanticize poverty.
We should not tell people that financial insecurity is spiritually valuable.
It isn't.
Money cannot solve everything.
But the absence of money can make many things harder.
That is why we want to acknowledge the economic reality rather than hide behind beautiful packaging.
At the same time, we believe there is something deeper than income.
Agency.
The feeling that you still have some ability to influence your future.
That you are not completely dependent on a single employer.
That you can learn something.
Build something.
Share something.
Create something.
Earn something.
Even if it begins very small.
From Sleeping Better to Living Differently
This is ultimately why COZHOM's economic experiment exists.
Not because we believe money is the meaning of life.
But because we believe that chronic financial anxiety can make life feel smaller.
And when life feels smaller, the night can become heavier.
The mind begins calculating.
Comparing.
Worrying.
Planning.
Replaying.
Searching for an escape.
Sometimes at 1 AM.
Sometimes at 2 AM.
Sometimes until morning.
Maybe the answer is not another productivity hack.
Maybe the answer begins with drawing a line between today and tomorrow.
And then, during the daylight hours, finding a new way forward.
The Day Is for Building. The Night Is for Living.
We want COZHOM to remain beautiful.
We want it to remain quiet.
We want it to remain premium.
We want it to remain about the night.
But we no longer believe that a premium brand must pretend that the difficult parts of life do not exist.
If AI changes the economy, we want to face it.
If people become economically insecure, we want to acknowledge it.
If some people are awake at night because they are worrying about money, we want to understand that reality.
And if there is a small, honest way for COZHOM to give some of those people another economic option, we are willing to explore it.
Maybe it works.
Maybe it doesn't.
Maybe the opportunity remains small.
Maybe it becomes something much larger than we expect.
We don't know.
But we believe experimentation is better than indifference.
One Product. One Ritual. One Small Possibility.
COZHOM began with a simple idea:
The night deserves a ritual.
Now we are adding another idea:
The people who participate in that ritual deserve a possibility.
Use it.
Live with it.
Decide whether you believe in it.
And if you genuinely do, share it.
If someone chooses to purchase through your link, you can participate in the value created.
No promises of wealth.
No guarantees.
No illusion that one product can solve the world's economic problems.
Just one small experiment in a world that is changing very quickly.
Because perhaps the future does not belong only to the people who know exactly what is coming.
Perhaps it belongs, in part, to those who are willing to prepare for uncertainty without surrendering their humanity.
AI will change the way we work.
It may change the way we earn.
It may change the meaning of a job.
It may change the relationship between human time and economic value.
We cannot stop that.
So we choose to learn how to live with it.
And while we are learning how to build a new future during the day, perhaps we can also remember something that technology cannot replace:
The value of darkness.
The value of silence.
The value of rest.
The value of another human being saying:
You have done enough for today.
Tomorrow will come.
But it is not here yet.
The day is over. The night is yours.