Forty-seven percent of Americans don’t think the time change is worth the hassle. Forty percent (40%) disagree, and 13% more aren’t sure.

So called “Daylight Savings Time” It calls for moving the clock forward one hour near the start of spring so that there is more daylight in the afternoons and evenings. When Daylight Saving Time ends in the fall, clocks are turned back an hour. An often-used reminder is “spring forward, fall back.”

To some degree we have Benjamin Franklin to thank. He was among the first to suggest the idea. In a 1784 essay he wrote that adjusting the clocks in the spring could be a good way to save on candles. The United States adopted Daylight Saving Time in 1918 but then repealed a year later. During World War II, the country again took up the practice to conserve energy from 1942 to 1945 dubbed “War Time.”
In 1966 the United States officially adopted the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which outlined Daylight Savings Time to begin on the last Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday in October.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated a change to the observed dates so now DST begins at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday of March and ends at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November.
States do not have to comply with the act and, in fact, two states, Arizona and Hawaii, do not.

Franklin’s idea of saving candles doesn’t apply today and while electricity use for illumination appears to drop about 1% increased air conditioning use more than offsets that. Perhaps the biggest savings was a drop of roughly 10% in auto crashes according to a 2007 Rand study. Otherwise it is in the eye of the beholder.