The switch to daylight saving time in the US is reducing donations.
Utility is an important human characteristic and the basis of every society. That’s what makes a study just published in Plos Biology (August 23) so explosive. Psychologists working with Matthew Walker (Berkeley) describe three pieces of evidence that lack of sleep reduces willingness to help. Most impressive is probably the simple assessment of a dataset, i.e. 3.9 million donations to US charities between 2001 and 1016: Always after the switch to daylight saving time – which initially robs people of even an hour of sleep – the donation amount dropped ten percent. With the passage to winter, it increased, although less. None of these jumps were observed in states without daylight saving time, such as Arizona and Hawaii.