As we prepare to fall back once again this year on Sunday, Nov. 3, debates over the costs and benefits of Daylight Saving Time are sure to reemerge. A bill to permanently end the practice passed in the Senate in 2022 and awaits further movement through the House of Representatives, indicating the argument to overturn the century-old policy is heating up.
Shinsuke Tanaka, assistant professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, has published work that helps inform this policy debate with evidence about the costs of Daylight Saving Time (DST). When Tanaka, who is originally from Japan, first came to the U.S.
, Daylight Saving Time felt like a shock, as Japan does not engage in the practice. An expert in environmental and health economics , Tanaka decided to look into the costs and benefits of DST. He found that many other researchers had been questioning the economic, environmental, and health impacts as well.
The study is published on the medRxiv pre-preint server and forthcoming in the journal Public and Global Health . DST was first implemented during World War I as an energy saving policy. However, recent studies have found that people actually consume more energy during DST, because with more daylight, people run air conditioners for longer, even if their lights aren't on for as long.
"The cooling consumes more energy, and the studies have shown that the energy consumption overall increases during Daylight Saving Time," .