The purpose of this inquiry is to determine how access and delay are distributed throughout the social structure. Data from a national survey of health care practices and costs confirm the conventional assumption, which is derived from a simple exchange model, that delay in doctors' offices is inversely related to income. However, the data also show that the poor, with or without appointments, wait longer at private offices as well as clinics, and that blacks wait longer than whites regardless of their income, appointment status, or source of care. Further analysis suggests that income and race are associated with waiting time because concentrations of family doctors are centered in the most affluent sectors of the white community. At the core of these concentrations, doctors compete for clients; at the periphery, clients compete for doctors. Separate race and income effects on delay exist because residential segregation by income and race are independently superimposed on one another. The ecological distribution of service units thus affects the time costs of their clientele. This fact is one manifestation of the overarching linkage between class, status, time, and space. Procurement of all goods and services requires the expenditure of both time and money. The total time cost that our society incurs in obtaining these goods and services is substantial. In 1970, for example, the average head of household was usually delayed for three-quarters of an hour during visits to his regular doctor's office. Since, in that same year, there were about 63 million heads of household in the United States averaging four visits per year (Aday and Andersen), the total waiting time expended just for medical care among household heads alone came out to over 189 million hours, or about an eight-hour work day for almost 24 million people. The objective of this investigation is to determine how these costs are spread throughout the social system. Only one inquiry has ever approached the question of how service systems and social institutions are linked in the determination of waiting time. This is a paper, written a short while ago, titled Waiting, Exchange and Power: The Distribution of Time in Social Systems (Schwartz, 13-46). The general assumption of this essay, which seeks to extend sociology's *This investigation was supported by the Commonwealth Fund. The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Pietr Bakker, Robert Burns, Steven Dubin, and Allon Fisher.