As daylight saving time arrives in Philly, we’re in for changes. Are they worth losing sleep over?

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio has just introduced a bill for year-round daylight saving time, and if you think you’ve read that somewhere before, chances are good that you’re not suffering from clock-change sleep deprivation, at least not yet.

It’s the same “Sunshine Protection Act” introduced in March 2018 and March 2021 by the Republican from Florida, where sunshine usually doesn’t need much protection, and passed in 2022. Philadelphia Democrat Brendan Boyle, who proposed a companion bill in the House, said at the time, “We need to fully study it.”

Looks like they weren’t quite ready for that final.

The bill went nowhere, and once again at 1:59:5999 a.m. Sunday the clocks will skip an hour and jump to 3 a.m. Various studies say the abrupt time change has at least short-term effects on health, safety, consumer choices, runners, general well-being, and more.

» READ MORE: Clocks are about to spring forward. Why does Pennsylvania still use daylight saving time?

And don’t be shocked if we fall back to standard time in November, and spring forward again in March 2024.

Almost two-thirds of the respondents to a nationwide survey commissioned by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine said they favor ending the clock-change ritual, but the nation remains deeply divided over whether to go all in for standard or daylight saving time.

The later sunsets that come with daylight saving time are popular, and the sun won’t set over Philly before 7 p.m. again until Sept. 22. Golfers and youth sports leagues certainly love them, as do restaurants that offer outdoor dining. Studies have shown that later daylight hours reduce crime.

Rubio and other advocates hail them as a stimuli to business and consumer spending.

» READ MORE: It seems like only four months ago that clocks were turned back. And it was.

So why hasn’t the U.S. Chamber of Commerce taken sides? Blame “mixed perspectives from our members,” said spokesperson Tatiana Niang. One analysis found that the economy takes a hit when the clocks move forward, with a $434 million loss in worker productivity nationwide — just over $10 million of that in the Philadelphia region.

So goes the perennial back-and-forth. While the stalemate continues, here is a look at what some researchers have to say about the clock-change fallout.

Fatal road accidents increased 6% in the five workdays after the change to DST, according to a 21-year study published in 2017 in the journal Current Biology, with the highest incidents occurring in mornings on the western ends of time zones, where the sun would rise later.

By contrast, a paper published earlier in the American Journal of Public Health found that in the nine weeks after the clocks moved, the later daylight hours evidently reduced fatal accidents.

Those findings notwithstanding, the National Safety Council favors year-round standard time and unequivocally advocates for ditching the switch. So does the sleep medicine academy, holding that morning light deprivation and delayed nightfall result “in chronic sleep loss.”

The clock change might increase the threat of heart attack “modestly but significantly” during the two weeks after both the March and November time changes, according to a 2019 article in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. However, the authors caution that “the evidence is limited and conflicting.”

The day the clocks move up evidently isn’t the best time to be running a marathon. A study covering an 18-year period that was published in Chronobiology International found that average times dropped 12.3 minutes compared with races run on other days.

While counterintuitive, a compendium of six rather elaborate studies published in the Journal of Marketing Research holds that being tired actually makes consumers more open to choices. That was evident in the subjects’ choices of beer, candy bars, and sticky notes on the day the clocks went forward, compared with other Sundays. Variety-seeking appears to be a weapon against sleepiness.

“The results really surprised me,” said coauthor Charles Weinberg, a marketing professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business.

The authors suggested it wouldn’t be a bad idea for bars to spice up their happy hour offerings this Monday.

While the clock-switch ritual marches on, it has undergone significant changes in recent decades, with daylight saving time in reality becoming the new standard.

In 2007 it was moved up four weeks as part of an energy-conservation bill and now consumes two-thirds of the calendar.

» READ MORE: Daylight saving time and "social jet lag"

Might it someday claim the other months?

It did 50 years ago, when the United States experimented with year-round DST during an energy crisis. However, it was so unpopular that it lasted only 10 months.

Weinberg, himself, is all for year-round standard time. He lives in Vancouver, where the sun will set at 9:22 p.m. at the summer solstice.

“Monday is a tough morning,” he said, and he misses that early morning light. But he says the consolation prize isn’t so bad.

“You get a bonus day in the summer,” he said. “You work during the day, and you go home and you have another four or five hours of sunlight.”