Individuals often face administrative hurdles in attempting to access health care, public programmes, and other legal statuses and entitlements. These ordeals are the products, directly or indirectly, of institutional and policy design choices. I argue that evaluating whether such ordeals are justifiable or desirable instruments of social policy depends on assessing, beyond their targeting effects, the process-related burdens they impose on those attempting to navigate them and these burdens’ distributive effects. I here examine specifically how ordeals that levy time costs reduce and constrain individuals’ free time, and how such time-cost ordeals may thereby create, deepen and compound disadvantages.

在尝试获得医疗保健，公共计划以及其他法律地位和权利时，个人经常面临行政障碍。这些折磨是机构和政策设计选择的直接或间接产物。我认为，评估此类折磨是否是合理的或可取的社会政策手段，取决于其目标效果之外的评估，施加于试图驾驭这些过程的与过程相关的负担以及这些负担的分配效应。在这里，我将专门研究征收时间成本的折磨如何减少和限制个人的闲暇时间，以及这种时间成本折磨如何造成，加深和加剧不利条件。