It's About Time: Examining Inequality in the Time Cost of Waiting

Abstract

Time spent waiting for services represents unproductive time imposed on individuals trying to fulfill basic needs. While qualitative and ethnographic work has found that income disparities also translate into disparities in time kept waiting for services, little evidence exists to confirm the scale and extent of socioeconomic differences in waiting time. We use time diary data from the nationally representative American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to estimate the difference between high-and low-income people in time spent waiting for basic services. We find that, relative to high-income people, low-income people are 3 percentage-points more likely to spend time waiting on an average day and their waiting spells are 12 minutes longer on average. The income gap in waiting time cannot be explained by differences in family obligations, demographics, education, work time, or travel time. Further, we find that high-income Black people experience the same higher average wait times as low-income people regardless of race.Our results suggest socioeconomic and racial inequalities in neighborhood quality, work schedule flexibility, and access to services exacerbate inequality in daily quality of life and the availability of productive time.

Administrative Burden in Citizen-State Encounters: The Role of Waiting, Communication Breakdowns and Administrative Errors

“…Crucially, however, as our findings illusrate, the experience of waiting could potentialy be shaped by factors other than location (Goodsell, 1984), including uncertainty (Ryan and Valverde, 2006). Finally, waiting is Administrative Burden in Citizen-State Encounters embeded in unequal power realtions, and is often also being used strategically as an efficient technique of domination and regulation (Schwartz, 1974;Soss, 2002;Lipsky, 2010;Auyero, 2012;Holt and Vinopal, 2021; for the Israeli context, see Helman, 2021). In that sense, it is often the powerful segments of society that can escape the costs of waiting.…”

“…Administrative burden studies have recognised this critical aspect. However, these analyses have tended to address waiting as a general component of compliance or learning costs (for exceptions, see Auyero, 2012;Herd and Moynihan, 2019;Holt and Vinopal, 2021). This leaves us with several unresolved questions, including how waiting is experienced in practice, and under what conditions it turns from a mere nuisance into a significantly burdensome experience.…”

The 5Ws of Racial Equity in Research: A Framework for Applying a Racial Equity Lens Throughout the Research Process

“…In It's about Time: Examining the Inequalities and Time Cost of Waiting , Holt and Vinopal provide evidence of racial and income disparities in “time autonomy,” the freedom to dictate how one's own time is allocated. 11 Although this report heavily focused on time spent waiting for goods and services, we argue that time autonomy, and more specifically waiting, is a far-reaching, yet often trivialized and overlooked research equity issue. Are research activities carried out when most convenient for participants, or the research team?…”