Daylight savings time? More like daylight costings time, says a University of British Columbia economics professor.
Werner Antweiler recently combed through various studies looking for evidence that springing forward boosts productivity and saves money.
“We’re not finding those savings — they’re not saving anything,” he said.
“We looked at both the benefits and the costs."
One of the main arguments for switching to daylight savings time is to save money by using less electricity, mainly for lighting. But we’re not seeing those energy savings partly because energy-efficient lighting has advanced over the past 20 years, and in some cases, daylight savings time is actually encouraging people to increase their electricity consumption. Antweiler referred to a study in Indiana in the mid-2000s. That state only started using daylight savings time in 2006, so researchers were able to compare behaviour before and after the switch.
“They found that the energy use was going up. They were using the bright light to stay up later, and this being a relatively hot place, they kept the air conditioner running later,” he said.
“They figured out that daylight savings time would cost the average Indiana household $3 a month extra.”
In Canada and the United States, daylight savings time was introduced nationally between 1942 and 1945 with the idea that, in addition to saving energy, it would boost worker productivity. But according to research, the opposite is true, Antweiler said.
How wrong is the time? This map by Stefano Maggiolo shows how much variation there is between solar time and standard time around the world
Research from Maurice Levi, a professor at Simon Fraser University, showed that the “Monday effect” — lower productivity on Mondays — shows up in the stock market.
“The Monday effect was magnified by 500% on the Monday after the DST switch,” Antweiler said.
“When they tallied these changes and magnified these through all the activity on the stock market, they found a [$31 billion] loss on that Monday, to be reversed in the next few days.”
While that research has been challenged, the effect has continued to be studied and evidence now suggests the Monday effect is real.
Various studies have found a link between switching to daylight savings time and an increase in traffic accidents. A 2001 study found a 6-8% increase in accidents on the Monday after the switch, which a 2004 study found that changing to daylight savings time all year would reduce pedestrian deaths by 13%.
“This is a real cost to society,” Antweiler said. “Maybe you and I are fine switching, but if one out of 100 people is not, when they get behind the wheel on the Monday and they’re inattentive and more likely to have an accident, when you multiply that through the economy … and you have the extra cases showing up through our statistics.”
@jenstden
