Affordability in Hours: A Time-Indexed Minimum Wage and an Essential Hours Credit

Executive Summary (text version)

Monthly Survival Hours (MSH)—the paid work time required to cover a fixed essentials basket—rose sharply after 2019, then partially retraced:

• D3 renters: 117.4 hours (2019) → 175.7 hours (2022) → 157.7 hours (2025).
• Renter–Owner gap (“Renter’s Surcharge”): across six metros in 2025, renters face an additional ~3.8–8.7 hours/month relative to owners.

Policy tests. We evaluate a Time-Indexed Minimum Wage (TIMW) anchored to hours, plus an Essential Hours Tax Credit (EHTC) that backstops shortfalls:

• TIMW target: H_target = 120 hours/month, adjusted semi-annually with a ≤5% glide cap to limit shocks.
• EHTC backstop: refunds shortfalls below H_threshold = 100 hours/month at default share α = 0.8:
  EHTCg,t = α · max(0, Hg,t − Hthreshold) × wg,t

Method in a paragraph

MSH converts a fixed essentials basket into hours using cohort wages (BLS CPS/OEWS) and item-level CPI (rebased to 2019=1), tracked by wage decile (D1–D10), tenure (renter vs. owner), and six metros. The TIMW targets H_target=120 h/mo with ≤5% semiannual adjustments. The EHTC backstops shortfalls below 100 h/mo at share α of the gap, valued at cohort wage w_g,t.

New Evidence: US Survey on Prices Shown in Hours of Work

Alongside the theoretical paper and long-run indices, we ran a preregistered survey experiment to see how real people react when everyday prices are shown not just in dollars, but also as hours of work. The study focuses on perceived affordability, willingness to pay, clarity and the sense of control over spending when prices are expressed in time.

Key results (US sample)

• Money + hours is clearest: 61% of respondents said prices are easiest to understand when both dollars and hours of work are shown together. Only 16% preferred money alone.
• Hours-of-work labels are useful and empowering: the average usefulness rating for automatic “price in hours” labels was 4.65/7. A majority (54%) rated them useful or very useful, and 53% said they make them feel more in control of their spending; just 13% said less in control.
• Big emergency bills look radically worse in hours: for a $900 car repair, the share calling it unaffordable jumped from 48% under money-only framing to 93% when shown as “$900 = 75 hours of work”. Those saying they would be likely to pay it this month dropped from 36% to 16%.
• Recurring costs get a reality check: for a $60/month phone plan, the share calling it unaffordable rose from 17% (money only) to 31% (money + 5 hours of work). The share saying they would be likely to choose or keep the plan dipped from 70% to 64%.
• Where people most want time labels: when asked where “price in hours of work” would help them most, respondents overwhelmingly chose rent & housing (98%), followed by loans & credit cards (49%), education & tuition (44%) and medical bills & insurance (43%). Subscriptions, groceries and one-off big purchases were chosen less often.
• New to many, but intuitive: about half of the sample said they rarely or never thought about prices as hours of work before this survey, yet they still tended to prefer the money + hours format and report feeling more in control when they saw it.

How this connects to the MSH / TIMW / EHTC work

The Affordability in Hours paper develops long-run indices and policy tools (MSH, TIMW, EHTC) that convert essential living costs into hours of work. The new survey adds a complementary layer: it shows that ordinary people not only understand the hours-of-work framing, but often prefer it and change their stated decisions when they see it.

• The MSH indices show how many hours it takes to cover essentials for different wage groups and housing tenures.
• The TIMW and EHTC proposals use those hours to design wage floors and credits that keep typical households near a target range of survival hours.
• The survey results suggest that if we exposed households to hours-of-work information at the point of decision—especially for rent, credit, tuition and medical costs—many would experience prices as clearer, more burdensome when they truly are, and more under their control.

Data, documentation and reuse

To make this experiment reusable, the full anonymized dataset, a plain-text codebook and the IMRAD-style results report are hosted openly on OSF. Anyone is welcome to reanalyse, critique or build on the findings.

• Dataset: CSV file with pseudonymous IDs, scenario responses, demographics and global attitude items.
• Codebook: codebook_affordability_in_hours.txt, describing each variable and scale.
• Results report: Affordability in Hours – Survey Results from a US Sample (PDF).

These materials are intended both as evidence for upcoming petitions and as a starting point for other researchers, journalists and app builders who want to experiment with hours-of-work price labels in the real world.