7 ms·

There is a whole body of research, comparing the areas on both sides of time zone boundaries. The results unanimously show that living too far west of your time

by sampo 5y ago

There is a whole body of research, comparing the areas on both sides of time zone boundaries. The results unanimously show that living too far west of your time zone's center line, has negative effects on health and economy. In light of this research, permanent winter time would be good for health and economy. Permanent summer time will be worse. Linkdump: https://www.econ.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/WP%2017-009.upload.pdf https://www.econ.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/WP%2017-009.up... http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/cebp/26/8/1306.full.pdf http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/cebp/26/8/1306.full.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21231877 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21231877 https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780 https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29636342 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29636342 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276058441_The_incidence_of_winter_depression_varies_within_time_zone https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276058441_The_incid...

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Permanent winter time would suck here, I like taking my kid to the playground after school, I can't do that in the winter because it is long dark by the time I pick him up. Who cares if the sun is up and bright at 6AM in the morning while I'm still sleeping. When I lived in Beijing, they are on standard time year round , and it was really horrible having the sun rise at 4AM in the morning during summer. Like really? How can that be healthy?
- sampo 5y ago
  > Who cares if the sun is up and bright at 6AM in the morning while I'm still sleeping. According to the research results, public health and economy would care.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Public health also cares about not switching up schedules.
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      They care even more about Year-round Standard Time: > We therefore strongly support removing DST changes or removing permanent DST and having governing organizations choose permanent Standard Time for the health and safety of their citizens. * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0748730419854197 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Because we are still farmers who need to wake up at 6AM in the morning?
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      > Because we are still farmers who need to wake up at 6AM in the morning? I start work at an office starting around 8:30-9:00 and I wake up at 6AM. Not quite sure what that time has to do with farmers.
      - Apocryphon 5y ago
        Sounds like you work in an all indoor environment where the sun matters not to your livelihood, unlike farmers.
        macintux 5y ago
        Do you think farmers will orient their working hours around a clock or the sun?
        Apocryphon 5y ago
        Not in the modern era, no: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691457
        throw0101a 5y ago
        > Sounds like you work in an all indoor environment where the sun matters not to your livelihood, unlike farmers. My (late) grandparent were farmers: they only cared about the time on Sundays to make sure they weren't late for Church services. Otherwise the the cows needed milking when they needed milking (which I helped with when I visited them).
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      Farmers don't care about the clock, neither do the cows. Work traditionally started when the sun came up, and cows got fed then too... since cows still can't read the clock, they still get up and want food at sunrise, DST or not.
  - joshstrange 5y ago
    > According to the research results, public health and economy would care. Well, good thing we've never let that stand in the way of a decision. /s Personally I'd prefer more light later in the day so that I don't feel like the day is over as soon as I get off work but that's just me.
    - d4mi3n 5y ago
      That's what the research supports. People go out more and spend money more when the sun is up after the working day. Kids play more. People exercise more.
      - joshstrange 5y ago
        Ahh, I think I read the comment I was replying to backwards (which is par for the course when it comes to TZ/DST-type things with me, "is it an hour earlier? or later").
        runarberg 5y ago
        No, you read it correctly the first time around. E.g. from the first link in the dump above: > we find that an extra hour of natural light in the evening reduces sleep duration by an average of 19 minutes and increases the likelihood of reporting insufficient sleep. The health benefits of people staying out longer and spending more money (?) are disputed I believe. The reduced sleep of day starting before sun-up are pretty universally recognized as bad for public health (particularly among teenagers). Also note that if staying out longer was a goal to strive for, there are number of alternatives to encourage that. Including shorter worker ours, more public spaces, public events, etc. Conversely getting people to sleep longer is much harder with the clock set 1+ hour after the sun clock.
        d4mi3n 5y ago
        > Also note that if staying out longer was a goal to strive for, there are number of alternatives to encourage that. Including shorter worker ours, more public spaces, public events, etc. Conversely getting people to sleep longer is much harder with the clock set 1+ hour after the sun clock. This are fantastic points I don't see in discussions around the topic. Goes to show that the solution space for a problem is often constrained by our perceptions of both the problem and what our expectations of a reasonable solution are.
- riffic 5y ago
  China has one time zone for the whole country if I'm not mistaken. the country spans 5 geographic time zones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China Permanent standard / solar time proponent here: I'm reminded of that quote about people believing you could get a longer blanket if you were to cut a foot off top and sew it onto the bottom.
  - vaughnegut 5y ago
    While true, it doesn't really disprove what the poster above is saying, since they lived in Beijing, the place that China's timezone is roughly centered on.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    That's definitely true for Urumuqi where stores open later (11AM instead of 9:30 or 10AM in the rest of the country). But Beijing is pretty far east where the time zone is mainly meant for.
    - billiam 5y ago
      Try Kashgar. It's dark until 10 or later every day in the winter.
      - riffic 5y ago
        the variability of solar time depends a great deal on latitude, if I'm not mistaken. perhaps lawmakers can try voting to change the tilt of the earth, lol.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Kashgar would be the worst possible situation in China, I've only ever been as far west as Urumuqi.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > Who cares if the sun is up and bright at 6AM in the morning while I'm still sleeping. Good for you that you're still sleeping at 6AM. But some of us wake up at 6AM (or earlier) and would like to have it be brighter to help kick start our circadian rhythm.
  - stouset 5y ago
    And people who work night shifts would be delighted if every locale instantly adopted a +12 hour time offset. Any change whatsoever to a status quo will delight some and upset others on an individual basis. I assume your point isn't that we should all adopt your preferences. So if not, what is it?
- stouset 5y ago
  You two are in violent agreement. Permanent DST gives you an extra hour of sunlight in the afternoon.
  - paulmd 5y ago
    grandparent is advocating permanent standard time/winter time, not permanent DST.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - stouset 5y ago
      You're correct, my apologies.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Moru 5y ago
  Why can't you take your kid to the playground after dark? In December we get sunrise at 8 but it's not light until 9 or so. Sunset is at 15 but it's quite dark at 14 already. Kids are happily playing with their parents in the snow no matter how dark it is, you can't stay indoors just because you have 5-6 hours of daylight. You just get a flashlight for your head and can play or go skiing in the forest.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Mostly it is just that there are no other kids to play with: yes, we might do it, but if we are the only ones it isn't great for him. But the real big problem is that sunshine in a Seattle winter is a precious commodity: 7/10 even with daylight we wouldn't get to the park because of rain, or its just not pleasant out. The problem with standard time is that 7/10 turns into not going 10/10, it wastes the precious sunlight we do have.
    - Moru 5y ago
      For us that hour does no difference at all, it's still dark when going to school/work and it's dark again when coming home. We have 4 hours and 20 minutes of daylight on the worst days, Seattle seems to have about 8 hours so there the DST hour actually does a difference I guess. But one hour less in the night has been shown to give a higher death rate that week every year so it's been discussed to get rid of it here too.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  What makes you think the school wouldn't start an hour later after the switch to permanent DST?
busyant 5y ago
All I can say is that I find "losing" the hour to be brutal for several weeks. I've never been good with jet-lag either. I like to joke that I never fully recover until they give me back the hour come November. I'd rather they just pick one and be done with it.
throw0101a 5y ago
To add to the pile-on, the position papers of various sleep and chronobiology societies: * https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/ https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/ * https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/ * http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-DST.pdf http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D... * https://www.chronobiology.com/impact-daylight-saving-time-circadian-clock/ https://www.chronobiology.com/impact-daylight-saving-time-ci... * https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commission_on_DST.pdf https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss... > The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently. Four peer reviewers provided expert critiques of the initial submission, and the SRBR Executive Board approved the revised manuscript as a Position Paper to help educate the public in their evaluation of current legislative actions to end DST. […] The choice of DST is political and therefore can be changed. If we want to improve human health, we should not fight against our body clock, and therefore, we should abandon DST and return to Standard Time (which is when the sun clock time most closely matches the social clock time) throughout the year. This solution would fix both the acute and the chronic problems of DST. We therefore strongly support removing DST changes or removing permanent DST and having governing organizations choose permanent Standard Time for the health and safety of their citizens. * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0748730419854197 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently. So they picked the wrong one.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    According to the folks that study this, that is correct.
    - 5y ago
audunw 5y ago
Would this be due to lack of light in the morning when waking up? If so, that's a solved problem these days. There's hundreds of ways to have lights that turn on in the morning. Having some kind of wakeup-light (simply two bright Philips Hue bulbs in the bedroom ceiling lamps these days) and taking vitamin D has solved the issues I've had with living far north, where it's dark most hours in the morning in mid-winter.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Most of us solve it by flooding our face with phone light in the middle of the night ;)
- Miner49er 5y ago
  You can say the same thing about lack of light at night?
pdonis 5y ago
> In light of this research, permanent winter time would be good for health and economy. Permanent summer time will be worse. Only one of these papers (the researchgate one) actually asserts a hypothesis for the root cause of the correlation observed that might (but see below) make this true--later time of sunrise. The others all assert the hypothesis that being further out of sync with the rest of your time zone (which determines what one paper calls "social time") is the root cause. The way to fix that is not permanent winter time but narrower time zones--for example, a good chunk of what is now the Eastern time zone in the US is closer to the Central time zone meridian and should really be in that time zone. But that fix is orthogonal to the permanent summer time question. Unfortunately for your argument, the one remaining paper (the researchgate one) is looking at variation with latitude, not variation with longitude. Latitude variation is going to be there regardless of what we do with daylight savings time. The fix for anyone bothered by the researchgate paper's findings is to move further south.
necovek 5y ago
That's quite interesting. I wonder how much of the population in US (and worldwide) lives in Eastern/Western part of timezones and whether people's preference is correlated with what part of the timezone they live in. I'd also like to see research if moving an extra hour or two would continue to see gains (not sure how one would do that, perhaps recruiting people with different life schedules). Eg. I prefer having DST on all the time, but I am at the almost Eastern end of the timezone, so perhaps my preference is affected by my experience too: eg. I already get 1h of earlier sunrise than Western-most parts of the TZ for the same wall clock time, but it's already dark outside at 4pm in winter months so way before work is done, which is what makes me unhappy. If it turns out majority of the population would prefer DST only because majority of the population lives in Eastern parts of the timezones, that'd be pretty unfair to those living in Western parts of the timezones, which is why I wonder what's the population distribution across timezones.
lmm 5y ago
I'm happy to believe that sleeping for 19 minutes less makes you less productive and less healthy, but does that effect outweigh having an extra 19 minutes of presumably leisure time? E.g. your paper says 3% lower salary, but 19 minutes is probably much more than 3% of a typical person's free time.

by sampo 5y ago

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

Permanent winter time would suck here, I like taking my kid to the playground after school, I can't do that in the winter because it is long dark by the time I pick him up. Who cares if the sun is up and bright at 6AM in the morning while I'm still sleeping. When I lived in Beijing, they are on standard time year round , and it was really horrible having the sun rise at 4AM in the morning during summer. Like really? How can that be healthy?

sampo 5y ago
> Who cares if the sun is up and bright at 6AM in the morning while I'm still sleeping. According to the research results, public health and economy would care.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Public health also cares about not switching up schedules.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    They care even more about Year-round Standard Time: > We therefore strongly support removing DST changes or removing permanent DST and having governing organizations choose permanent Standard Time for the health and safety of their citizens. * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0748730419854197 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Because we are still farmers who need to wake up at 6AM in the morning?
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > Because we are still farmers who need to wake up at 6AM in the morning? I start work at an office starting around 8:30-9:00 and I wake up at 6AM. Not quite sure what that time has to do with farmers.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Sounds like you work in an all indoor environment where the sun matters not to your livelihood, unlike farmers.
      - macintux 5y ago
        Do you think farmers will orient their working hours around a clock or the sun?
        Apocryphon 5y ago
        Not in the modern era, no: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691457
      - throw0101a 5y ago
        > Sounds like you work in an all indoor environment where the sun matters not to your livelihood, unlike farmers. My (late) grandparent were farmers: they only cared about the time on Sundays to make sure they weren't late for Church services. Otherwise the the cows needed milking when they needed milking (which I helped with when I visited them).
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Farmers don't care about the clock, neither do the cows. Work traditionally started when the sun came up, and cows got fed then too... since cows still can't read the clock, they still get up and want food at sunrise, DST or not.
- joshstrange 5y ago
  > According to the research results, public health and economy would care. Well, good thing we've never let that stand in the way of a decision. /s Personally I'd prefer more light later in the day so that I don't feel like the day is over as soon as I get off work but that's just me.
  - d4mi3n 5y ago
    That's what the research supports. People go out more and spend money more when the sun is up after the working day. Kids play more. People exercise more.
    - joshstrange 5y ago
      Ahh, I think I read the comment I was replying to backwards (which is par for the course when it comes to TZ/DST-type things with me, "is it an hour earlier? or later").
      - runarberg 5y ago
        No, you read it correctly the first time around. E.g. from the first link in the dump above: > we find that an extra hour of natural light in the evening reduces sleep duration by an average of 19 minutes and increases the likelihood of reporting insufficient sleep. The health benefits of people staying out longer and spending more money (?) are disputed I believe. The reduced sleep of day starting before sun-up are pretty universally recognized as bad for public health (particularly among teenagers). Also note that if staying out longer was a goal to strive for, there are number of alternatives to encourage that. Including shorter worker ours, more public spaces, public events, etc. Conversely getting people to sleep longer is much harder with the clock set 1+ hour after the sun clock.
        d4mi3n 5y ago
        > Also note that if staying out longer was a goal to strive for, there are number of alternatives to encourage that. Including shorter worker ours, more public spaces, public events, etc. Conversely getting people to sleep longer is much harder with the clock set 1+ hour after the sun clock. This are fantastic points I don't see in discussions around the topic. Goes to show that the solution space for a problem is often constrained by our perceptions of both the problem and what our expectations of a reasonable solution are.
riffic 5y ago
China has one time zone for the whole country if I'm not mistaken. the country spans 5 geographic time zones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China Permanent standard / solar time proponent here: I'm reminded of that quote about people believing you could get a longer blanket if you were to cut a foot off top and sew it onto the bottom.
- vaughnegut 5y ago
  While true, it doesn't really disprove what the poster above is saying, since they lived in Beijing, the place that China's timezone is roughly centered on.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  That's definitely true for Urumuqi where stores open later (11AM instead of 9:30 or 10AM in the rest of the country). But Beijing is pretty far east where the time zone is mainly meant for.
  - billiam 5y ago
    Try Kashgar. It's dark until 10 or later every day in the winter.
    - riffic 5y ago
      the variability of solar time depends a great deal on latitude, if I'm not mistaken. perhaps lawmakers can try voting to change the tilt of the earth, lol.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Kashgar would be the worst possible situation in China, I've only ever been as far west as Urumuqi.
throw0101a 5y ago
> Who cares if the sun is up and bright at 6AM in the morning while I'm still sleeping. Good for you that you're still sleeping at 6AM. But some of us wake up at 6AM (or earlier) and would like to have it be brighter to help kick start our circadian rhythm.
- stouset 5y ago
  And people who work night shifts would be delighted if every locale instantly adopted a +12 hour time offset. Any change whatsoever to a status quo will delight some and upset others on an individual basis. I assume your point isn't that we should all adopt your preferences. So if not, what is it?
stouset 5y ago
You two are in violent agreement. Permanent DST gives you an extra hour of sunlight in the afternoon.
- paulmd 5y ago
  grandparent is advocating permanent standard time/winter time, not permanent DST.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - stouset 5y ago
    You're correct, my apologies.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Moru 5y ago
Why can't you take your kid to the playground after dark? In December we get sunrise at 8 but it's not light until 9 or so. Sunset is at 15 but it's quite dark at 14 already. Kids are happily playing with their parents in the snow no matter how dark it is, you can't stay indoors just because you have 5-6 hours of daylight. You just get a flashlight for your head and can play or go skiing in the forest.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Mostly it is just that there are no other kids to play with: yes, we might do it, but if we are the only ones it isn't great for him. But the real big problem is that sunshine in a Seattle winter is a precious commodity: 7/10 even with daylight we wouldn't get to the park because of rain, or its just not pleasant out. The problem with standard time is that 7/10 turns into not going 10/10, it wastes the precious sunlight we do have.
  - Moru 5y ago
    For us that hour does no difference at all, it's still dark when going to school/work and it's dark again when coming home. We have 4 hours and 20 minutes of daylight on the worst days, Seattle seems to have about 8 hours so there the DST hour actually does a difference I guess. But one hour less in the night has been shown to give a higher death rate that week every year so it's been discussed to get rid of it here too.
_ph_ 5y ago
What makes you think the school wouldn't start an hour later after the switch to permanent DST?

busyant 5y ago

All I can say is that I find "losing" the hour to be brutal for several weeks. I've never been good with jet-lag either. I like to joke that I never fully recover until they give me back the hour come November. I'd rather they just pick one and be done with it.

throw0101a 5y ago

To add to the pile-on, the position papers of various sleep and chronobiology societies: * https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/ https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/ * https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/ * http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-DST.pdf http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D... * https://www.chronobiology.com/impact-daylight-saving-time-circadian-clock/ https://www.chronobiology.com/impact-daylight-saving-time-ci... * https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commission_on_DST.pdf https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss... > The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently. Four peer reviewers provided expert critiques of the initial submission, and the SRBR Executive Board approved the revised manuscript as a Position Paper to help educate the public in their evaluation of current legislative actions to end DST. […] The choice of DST is political and therefore can be changed. If we want to improve human health, we should not fight against our body clock, and therefore, we should abandon DST and return to Standard Time (which is when the sun clock time most closely matches the social clock time) throughout the year. This solution would fix both the acute and the chronic problems of DST. We therefore strongly support removing DST changes or removing permanent DST and having governing organizations choose permanent Standard Time for the health and safety of their citizens. * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0748730419854197 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...

phkahler 5y ago
>> the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently. So they picked the wrong one.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  According to the folks that study this, that is correct.
  - 5y ago

audunw 5y ago

Would this be due to lack of light in the morning when waking up? If so, that's a solved problem these days. There's hundreds of ways to have lights that turn on in the morning. Having some kind of wakeup-light (simply two bright Philips Hue bulbs in the bedroom ceiling lamps these days) and taking vitamin D has solved the issues I've had with living far north, where it's dark most hours in the morning in mid-winter.

laurent92 5y ago
Most of us solve it by flooding our face with phone light in the middle of the night ;)
Miner49er 5y ago
You can say the same thing about lack of light at night?

pdonis 5y ago

> In light of this research, permanent winter time would be good for health and economy. Permanent summer time will be worse. Only one of these papers (the researchgate one) actually asserts a hypothesis for the root cause of the correlation observed that might (but see below) make this true--later time of sunrise. The others all assert the hypothesis that being further out of sync with the rest of your time zone (which determines what one paper calls "social time") is the root cause. The way to fix that is not permanent winter time but narrower time zones--for example, a good chunk of what is now the Eastern time zone in the US is closer to the Central time zone meridian and should really be in that time zone. But that fix is orthogonal to the permanent summer time question. Unfortunately for your argument, the one remaining paper (the researchgate one) is looking at variation with latitude, not variation with longitude. Latitude variation is going to be there regardless of what we do with daylight savings time. The fix for anyone bothered by the researchgate paper's findings is to move further south.

necovek 5y ago

That's quite interesting. I wonder how much of the population in US (and worldwide) lives in Eastern/Western part of timezones and whether people's preference is correlated with what part of the timezone they live in. I'd also like to see research if moving an extra hour or two would continue to see gains (not sure how one would do that, perhaps recruiting people with different life schedules). Eg. I prefer having DST on all the time, but I am at the almost Eastern end of the timezone, so perhaps my preference is affected by my experience too: eg. I already get 1h of earlier sunrise than Western-most parts of the TZ for the same wall clock time, but it's already dark outside at 4pm in winter months so way before work is done, which is what makes me unhappy. If it turns out majority of the population would prefer DST only because majority of the population lives in Eastern parts of the timezones, that'd be pretty unfair to those living in Western parts of the timezones, which is why I wonder what's the population distribution across timezones.

lmm 5y ago

I'm happy to believe that sleeping for 19 minutes less makes you less productive and less healthy, but does that effect outweigh having an extra 19 minutes of presumably leisure time? E.g. your paper says 3% lower salary, but 19 minutes is probably much more than 3% of a typical person's free time.