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.

中文翻译：

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时间配给：时间成本考验的负担和分配效应

个人在尝试获得医疗保健、公共项目和其他法律地位和权利时经常面临行政障碍。这些考验直接或间接地是制度和政策设计选择的产物。我认为，评估这些磨难是否是合理的或可取的社会政策工具取决于评估它们对那些试图驾驭它们的人施加的与过程相关的负担以及这些负担的分配效应。我在这里专门研究了征收时间成本的考验如何减少和限制个人的空闲时间，以及这种时间成本考验如何因此产生、加深和加剧不利因素。