Volunteering in Later Life: Research Frontiers

Volunteering in later life: research frontiers.

OBJECTIVES This review summarizes the current knowledge about volunteering in later life and suggests 5 research questions at the forefront of knowledge development. RESULTS Rates of volunteering do not decline significantly until the middle of the 7th decade, and older volunteers commit more hours than younger volunteers. Older adults with more human and social capital tend to volunteer, and...

The impact of volunteering on well-being in later life

Still happy after all these years: research frontiers on subjective well-being in later life.

UNLABELLED OBJECTIVES. Understanding the factors that promote quality of life in old age has been a staple of social gerontology since its inception and remains a significant theme in aging research. The purpose of this article was to review the state of the science with regard to subjective well-being (SWB) in later life and to identify promising directions for future research. METHODS This ...

Can volunteering in later life reduce the risk of dementia? A 5-year longitudinal study among volunteering and non-volunteering retired seniors

We propose that voluntary work, characterized by social, physical and cognitive activity in later life is associated with fewer cognitive problems and lower dementia rates. We test these assumptions using 3-wave, self-reported, and registry data from the 2010, 2012, and 2014 Swedish National Prescribed Drug Register. We had three groups of seniors in our data: 1) no volunteering (N = 531), 2) d...

Volunteering and depression in later life: social benefit or selection processes?

Does volunteer participation reduce depressive symptoms among older people? Does depression influence whether older people will volunteer? Might nonrandom attrition in a longitudinal study bias the relationship between volunteering and depression? This research addresses these questions with three-wave data from theAmericans' Changing Lives study. Multigroup structural equation models for compl...