A community's socioeconomic deprivation may be linked to sleep duration of its residents, according to a recent twin study.

Researchers found that increased socioeconomic deprivation was significantly associated with decreased sleep duration across all twins. Further analysis within twin pairs found that this association remained significant after accounting for genetics and shared family environment, indicating a robust relationship.

"These results are a starting point for discussing the impact that neighborhood-level factors have on sleep duration," Dr. Nathaniel Watson, principal investigator of the study, said in a statement. "If we improve upon social deprivation, we may have an opportunity to improve upon habits that influence how long people sleep."

For the study, researchers collected data from 2,202 twin pairs -- 1,268 identical pairs and 934 fraternal pairs -- from the University of Washington Twin Registry. Researchers said the mean self-reported nightly sleep was 7.4 hours.

Community socioeconomic deprivation was measured using the Singh Index, a composite, area-level measure. The index combines 17 indicators measuring factors such as poverty, income, education and housing. Researchers also found an intriguing gene by environment interaction. As socioeconomic deprivation increased, the total genetic and non-shared environmental variability of sleep duration also went up.

"The more socioeconomically deprived the neighborhood, the more erratic the sleep duration, both shorter and longer than the healthy seven to nine hours per night that we recommend," Watson said.

The findings were recently published in an online supplement of the journal Sleep and were presented in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at SLEEP 2014, the 28th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.