Today, Nov. 6, the United States will have another hour of sleep. The period of Daylight Saving Time ended at 2 a.m., when most smartphones will automatically turn themselves back one hour.
However, in the case of some alarm clocks that are still analog, they have to be turned back manually. It's advised to do this before going to bed, so that you will be displayed the correct hour in the morning. DST is also a time when most people change their batteries, check their alarms and the carbon monoxide detectors. Because the event of turning our clocks happens twice every year, it's always a good reminder of biannual things we have to take care of.
"Working smoke alarms cut the risk of dying in a home fire in half. Turn and test is a reminder to set your clocks back and take a few minutes to push the test button to make sure all alarms are working," noted Neela Mukherjee Lockel, CEO of the American Red Cross on Long Island.
The bad news about this is that the sun will set an hour earlier, which will make it dark before dinner in Long Island. On Sunday, Nov. 6, the sun will set at 4:46 p.m., for instance.
Describing The Phenomenon
No less than 232 years back, Benjamin Franklin suggested that people should use church bells to wake up citizens when the sun rises and make the most of the daylight, as a means to be economical with the use of expensive candles. While he was joking, more than two centuries later, we still preserved this habit.
The areas in the United States not employing DST are Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. As an exception to most of the U.S. states, Arizona hasn't used DST in more than 40 years.
There are other differences in how this habit is employed - or not used at all - all over the world. For instance, the European Union turns back its clocks every last Sunday of October, one week before the United States. China, India and Japan, very much like Arizona, don't use DST at all.
Economic Benefits Of DST
While the benefits of DST are various, economists have worked on a scientific paper dismissing the economic value of this measure. Comparing two identical cities at opposite ends of the same time zone, the one on the Eastern side, where the sun rises and sets one hour earlier, have a 1.5 percent increase in worker wages on the short run and 5 percent on the long run.
However, it is complicated to estimate the real economic benefits of this measure, as higher wages contribute to a higher cost of sleep, thus people will work more, which can be a key variable in the economy of this process.
