We're Overdue To End Daylight Saving Time
The government experiment in socially engineering the country into less energy use raised costs.
On Sunday, Arizonans, Hawaiians, and residents of several U.S. territories happily went about their days with no need to worry about a task that annoys most Americans; we didn't have to change our clocks to accommodate the annual switch to daylight saving time. And we won't have to switch back to standard time in the fall because that's what our clocks display year-round. A majority of our countrymen would like to join us in benevolently neglecting our clocks' time settings.
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Americans Want To Stop Changing Their Clocks
"As the March 9 switch to daylight saving time (DST) approaches in the U.S., the majority of Americans (54%) say they are ready to do away with the practice," Gallup reported last week. That's a huge shift from the 1990s, when almost three-quarters of Americans thought changing their clocks twice a year was a fine idea. This is an area of rare bipartisan agreement, with majorities of both Democrats and Republicans eager to ditch clock changes.
A plurality of 48 percent favors keeping standard time all year; 24 percent would put daylight saving time in place throughout the year.
Two years ago, YouGov pollsters also found a majority (62 percent) favored ending the clock-switching ritual. But respondents in that poll were evenly divided over whether clocks should be permanently set to standard time or daylight saving time. Fatigue over fiddling with clocks and screwing up schedules was the unifying factor. Adjusting clocks is a century-long experiment with which people are weary.
"Daylight saving time was introduced at the national level in 1918, the last year of World War I, when the U.S. sought to conserve fuel by extending daylight working hours as a wartime necessity," notes Gallup. It was reimposed during World War II, then became a local option until 1966. That year federal law changed to allow states to opt in or out of clock changes so long as they did so statewide (except for those straddling time zones that could split the difference).
Since then, the federal government has fiddled with the start and stop dates several times. There was a brief experiment during the 1970s energy crunch with year-round daylight saving time. It proved wildly unpopular and was ended by Congress.
Completely pulling the plug on twice-annual time resets would make sense. While clock-switching has its misguided fans, the practice was born from a promise of cost-savings that never came to fruition. For most of us, it imposes more costs than benefits.
DST Increases Energy Use and Imposes Health Risks
"Recent research suggests that DST actually increases energy use," Laura Grant, a professor of economics at Claremont McKenna College, wrote in 2016. Grant coauthored a study with Yale economist Matthew Kotchen examining Indiana which, straddling time zones, only partially observed daylight saving time until 2006 when the practice went statewide. "We showed that DST had actually increased residential electricity demand in Indiana by 1 to 4 percent annually," she added.
The extra energy use occurred during summer. With more daylight, people run air conditioners longer.
There are also unpleasant health effects. In 2024, Shinsuke Tanaka, of the University of Connecticut's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, also looked at Indiana which makes for a good case study because of its abrupt and relatively recent change.
"Tanaka found a 27% increase in the number of heart attacks in Indiana for two weeks after springing ahead when the entire state started practicing DST compared to the year before, while no significant impact was observed at the fall transition," the University of Connecticut reported. "Tanaka found that the increase in the number of heart attacks remained relatively consistent from year-to-year."
Tanaka attributed the surge in heart attacks to disrupted sleep routines from clock changes.
Findings of increased energy costs and dangerous medical events certainly mean higher costs from forcing people to change their clocks twice a year. But how much? Well, let's look at the time involved in jabbing buttons and turning knobs to reset clocks. In 2008, the economist William F. Shughart II of the Independent Institute did just that.
Forced Clock Changes Cost Billions Every Year
"The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average American's hourly wage was $17.57 in September 2007. Assuming that it takes everyone 10 minutes to move all of their clocks and watches forward or backward by an hour, the opportunity cost of doing so works out to $2.93 per person," Shughart wrote. He extrapolated the costs across the U.S. population, excluding those who live in areas exempt from such chronological shenanigans. The cost of two clock changes per year, he estimated, was $1.7 billion in 2008 dollars.
In 2013, Mark J. Perry of the American Enterprise Institute revisited the issue and estimated that inflation and population growth had increased the annual cost of changing clocks to $2 billion. A quick run through the CPI inflation calculator at the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that inflation alone has since increased that to over $2.5 billion. Perry also suggested that more costs could be expected in the unsynchronized schedule changes between Americans and overseas business partners as clocks change in some countries on different dates than in the U.S. or not at all.
Last year, Chmura Economics and Analytics looked at the cost of daylight saving time in U.S. metropolitan statistical areas based on "evidence that the DST change led to an increase in heart attacks (myocardial infarctions), strokes, workplaces injuries (in specific industries), and traffic accidents." The financial firm put the cost of clock changes at $672.02 million annually. "This includes $374.75 million from increased heart attacks, $251.53 million from increases in strokes, $18.35 million from additional workplace injuries, and $27.39 million from increases in traffic accidents."
Obviously, there's wiggle room when it comes to estimating the total costs of forcing people to reset their clocks and their schedules twice each year. But it's hard to argue that clock changes benefit anybody except that subset of the population that really wants more daylight in the evening. For most of us, the impact of changing our clocks is measured in lost time, expense, and increased health risk.
Daylight saving time was a paternalistic government experiment in socially engineering the country into less energy use by fiddling the clocks. Like most government gimmicks, it doesn't work as advertised. Let's get the government out of the business of telling us to how to set our clocks.
