By Lee Gregory

We rarely think of time as something that welfare states distribute. Instead, debates about social policy tend to focus on money, services, and behaviour. Yet, for many people navigating welfare systems, time is one of the most valuable, and unequally shared, resources at stake. From waiting for appointments to juggling work and care, welfare systems shape not just what people receive, but how they live their time.

In Time, Welfare and Society, I argue that time is not a neutral background condition. It is a central dimension of how inequality is produced and experienced. When we take time seriously, we begin to see welfare in a very different way: as a set of institutions that structure daily rhythms, life trajectories, and future possibilities.

The hidden time costs of welfare

What does it mean to say that welfare systems shape time? Consider the everyday realities of accessing support: filling out forms, attending appointments, waiting for decisions, or responding within tight deadlines. These processes demand time, attention, and energy. They also often involve uncertainty—delays that are difficult to predict and systems that are hard to navigate.

For some, these demands are manageable. For others, they are overwhelming. A parent balancing childcare and employment, a disabled person managing fluctuating health, or someone in insecure work may find that welfare processes consume significant portions of their day and disrupt their ability to manage other responsibilities.

These are what I call temporal harms. They include waiting, administrative burden, repeated cycles of instability, and the inability to plan for the future. Crucially, these are not simply unfortunate side effects. They are built into how welfare systems operate.

Why existing policy thinking falls short

Despite this, mainstream approaches to policy analysis struggle to capture the importance of time. Cost–benefit analysis tends to reduce time to a financial value, or ignore it altogether. Performance metrics focus on speed and efficiency, often assuming that faster is better. Behavioural approaches typically frame time as something individuals should manage more effectively.

What these approaches overlook is that time is not just an individual resource. It is structured through policy design. Some people are required to give more time to the system than others. Some can control and plan their time, while others live with constant disruption and uncertainty.

When time remains invisible in policy analysis, these inequalities persist—and can even intensify.

Towards temporal justice

To address this gap, the book re-develops several concepts (need, citizenship and social justice) to consider temporality. To illustrate, the idea of temporal justice builds on existing discussions of fairness and inequality but focuses specifically on how time is distributed, valued, and controlled.

Temporal justice highlights four key dimensions:

• Discretionary time: the time people have beyond meeting essential demands
• Temporal autonomy: the ability to predict, plan, and control the future
• Relational time: time for care, connection, and recovery
• Intergenerational time: how policies shape opportunities across generations

These dimensions remind us that justice is not only about resources or recognition—it is also about whether people have the time to live meaningful, sustainable lives.

At the same time, temporal justice requires us to recognise diversity. People do not all experience time in the same way. Care responsibilities, chronic illness, and social relationships involve rhythms that do not align neatly with standardised schedules. Policies that assume a single, uniform model of time risk marginalising those whose lives do not fit these expectations.

‘Time is a slippery concept, yet it is central to understanding inequalities and the policies that aim to address them. This book traces the connections between time, power and inequalities, equipping readers to recognise and challenge the temporal norms that underpin social policy.’

– Ceri Hughes, University of Manchester, UK

From theory to practice: Temporal Impact Assessment

Recognising time as a dimension of justice is an important first step. But it also raises a practical question: how can policymakers take time into account in decision-making?

To address this, the book introduces Temporal Impact Assessment (TIA). TIA is a framework for evaluating how policies affect people’s time. Rather than focusing narrowly on financial costs or behavioural outcomes, it asks a different set of questions:

• What time demands does a policy create?
• Who bears these demands—and who benefits?
• How does the policy affect people’s ability to plan and organise their lives?
• What are the longer-term temporal consequences?

By asking these questions, TIA makes visible dimensions of policy that are often overlooked. For example, a policy designed to increase efficiency may, in practice, transfer time burdens onto individuals and families. Conversely, relatively small changes, such as more predictable appointment schedules or reduced reassessment requirements, can significantly improve people’s ability to manage work and care.

TIAs are not a replacement but a compliment for existing policy tools: adding a critical dimension that is currently missing. It encourages policymakers to think not only about what policies deliver, but also about how they shape the time people have to live their lives.

Rethinking work, care and the future of welfare

Time-based thinking is especially important in the context of work and care. Across many countries, we face increasing demand for care services alongside labour shortages and changing work patterns. Flexible work is often presented as a solution, but it can also create new pressures, particularly when it shifts responsibility for managing time onto individuals.

At the same time, care systems frequently rely on unpaid or underpaid labour, often provided by women. Delays in accessing care, or gaps in provision, require families to fill in the missing time. These dynamics highlight how policies in different areas, labour markets, family policy, and welfare systems, interact to shape people’s temporal experiences.

A temporal perspective encourages a more holistic approach. Rather than treating working time, care time, and welfare time separately, we need to understand how they fit together across the life course. This opens up new questions about how policies can support people not just financially, but temporally, helping them balance responsibilities, plan for the future, and maintain wellbeing.

Time as a public value

Ultimately, the argument I advance is that time should be recognised as a public value. Like income, health, or education, time can be distributed more or less fairly. It can support or constrain people’s ability to participate in society, care for others, and pursue their own goals.

Taking time seriously challenges some of our key assumptions about policy design. It encourages us to rethink the focus on speed and efficiency, and to pay greater attention to lived experience. It also pushes us to consider long-term consequences and intergenerational impacts.

In doing so, it offers a different vision of welfare. A temporally just welfare state would not simply deliver services, it would enable people to live well by ensuring they have the time to do so.

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Lee Gregory is an Associate Professor in Social Policy in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham