Health Benefits of Volunteering

1
Health Benefits of Volunteering

• Rene Bekkers
• Theo van Tilburg
• John Wilson

2
Benefits of volunteering

• In Clary Snyders Volunteer Function Inventory,
  volunteering serves many functions, e.g. value
  expression, social contacts, learning,
  enhancement
• These functions may be the benefits that
  volunteers anticipate and hence motivate
  volunteering
• Health benefits are not included in the VFI but
  are important nonetheless

3
Health benefits

• A large and still growing body of literature
  suggests that volunteering enhances or sustains
  health, especially in old age
• Volunteers are more likely to report they are in
  good health, report fewer chronic illnesses, and
  better mental health
• Volunteers live longer than non-volunteers

4
Issues to be resolved

• What kind of volunteering is most beneficial?
• What kind of health outcomes are affected by
  volunteering?
• How and why does volunteering promote health?
• How much of the relationship is causal?

5
Strictly speaking

• We do not know to what extent volunteering
  benefits health, and to what extent health
  benefits volunteering
• Its impossible to tell from cross-sectional
  relationships
• To what extent do more healthy individuals
  self-select into volunteering?
• To what extent do changes in health affect
  changes in volunteering and vice versa?

6
Three arguments

• Joy of giving hypothesis Volunteering has a
  physiological stress-buffering effect
• Social network size hypothesis Volunteering
  builds networks that may be called upon when in
  need oneself
• Personality strength hypothesis Volunteering
  enhances psychological well-being that sustains
  health

7
The joy of giving

• It is better to give than to receive
• Among a sample of US couples, a larger amount of
  support given (but not received) was associated
  with better health outcomes (Brown et al., 2003)
• Among a sample of Finnish women, a larger amount
  of support given (relative to received) was
  associated with lower depression (Väänänen et
  al., 2005)
• But not among men (reverse pattern)
• And perceived benefits for others do not seem to
  moderate the effect (Morrow-Howell et al., 2003)

8
Social networks

• Protect health because of
• Access to health information
• Normative control, reducing unhealthy living
• Support received when in need
• In sum, individuals with larger networks enjoy
  better health (House, 1985)
• But isnt this all simply the result of more
  healthy individuals having larger networks?

9
Personality strength

• Volunteering increases personal coping resources
  such as self-esteem, an internal locus of
  control, self-efficacy, sense of mastery
• This cluster of traits called personality
  strength positively affects health
• Positive beliefs speed up recovery after surgery
  (Scheier et al., 1989)
• But isnt this all about more healthy individuals
  (justly) feeling they are more in control of
  their lives?

10
Adequate Testing, Please!

• Cross-sectional data are useless here
• We need longitudinal data to disentangle causes
  and consequences of volunteering
• We should look at how people change over time
  when they have started and quit volunteering
• Halaby (2004, Annual Review of Sociology)
  controlling for Yt-1 is not enough
• Use fixed effects regression models, eliminating
  variance between individuals
• XT in STATA

11
Longitudinal Ageing Study Amsterdam (LASA)

• Ongoing panel study among a random sample of the
  (55) elderly in the Netherlands
• Baseline study in 1992-1993 collected elaborate
  information on objective and subjective health
  status, religion, personality, socio-economic
  status, social networks and engagement in
  voluntary associations
• Respondents have been re-interviewed every three
  years unless unable or dead

12
Development of subjective health
13
Mortality risks
14
Volunteering effects on subjective health
Estimates on effects of volunteering (m26.5)
from random and fixed effects regression models.
Source LASA, 1992-2003 (n9,034 2,370
unbalanced panel)
15
Volunteering effects on personality strength
16
Volunteering effects on health outcomes
17
Volunteering effects on networks
18
Stepwise analysis subjective health
19
Stepwise analysis mortality risk
Note waves 1-4 only
20
Volunteering effects

• Social network size Volunteering enlarges
  networks, but not as strong as it seems
• Joy of giving Volunteering does not increase
  support given or received, emotional or
  instrumental
• Personality strength Volunteering improves
  personality strength (mastery)

21
Volunteering effects are mediated

• NOT by social network size because changes
  therein are not related to health
• By the joy of giving
• instrumental support given sustains health and
  instrumental support received is detrimental
• but emotional support received delays death and
  support given speeds it
• By personality strength Volunteering effects on
  subjective health are mainly mediated by
  personality strength

22
Discussion

• Are other social activities less beneficial than
  volunteering?
• How does the health benefit vary with levels of
  engagement (number of hours volunteered)?
• Which variables moderate the health benefit (age,
  religion, education)?