OBJECTIVES The association of volunteering with well-being has been found in previous research, but mostly among older people. The aim of this study was to examine the association of volunteering with mental well-being among the British population across the life course. DESIGN British Household Panel Survey, a population-based longitudinal study. SETTING UK. PARTICIPANTS 66 343 observati...

BACKGROUND Volunteering has been advocated by the United Nations, and American and European governments as a way to engage people in their local communities and improve social capital, with the potential for public health benefits such as improving wellbeing and decreasing health inequalities. Furthermore, the US Corporation for National and Community Service Strategic Plan for 2011-2015 focuse...

With rapid trend of aging society and family disorganization, the role of private resources in strengthening social welfare activities becomes more significant. With economic development, Korean citizens’ giving culture has been settled solidly. In 2009, Korean citizen’s volunteering participation rate reached 23.9% which showed 8.5% increase compared to 2007 rate of 15.8%. Average annual volun...

The robust association between religion and volunteering and education and volunteering can be interpreted in developmental terms as a function of socialization. Churches and schools instill attitudes that predispose the individual to volunteer. Data from two waves of the National Survey of Midlife in the United States (1995 and 2005) are used to test a hypothesis that generativity—a desire to ...

This study investigated the relationship between the monetary giving and volunteering behavior of adolescents and the role-modeling and conversations about giving provided by their parents. The participants are a large nationally-representative sample of 12-18 year-olds from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics’ Child Development Supplement (n = 1,244). Adolescents reported whether they gave mone...

BACKGROUND The motivation to volunteer on a medical service trip (MST) may involve more than a simple desire for philanthropy. Some volunteers may be motivated by an intrinsic interest in volunteering in which the context of the volunteer activity is less important. Others may volunteer because the context of their volunteering is more important than their intrinsic interest in volunteering. Fu...

OBJECTIVES Existing literature has shown that volunteering is related to better physical and mental health outcomes. The purpose of this study is to examine whether personality traits and volunteering are independent predictors of physical and mental health. METHODS The current study utilizes data from the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network (SPAN), a representative sample of community-ba...

Efforts to expand protected area networks are limited by the costs of managing protected sites. Volunteers who donate labor to help manage protected areas can help defray these costs. However, volunteers may be willing to donate more labor to some protected areas than others. Understanding variation in volunteering effort would enable conservation organizations to account for volunteer labor in...

OBJECTIVES This study investigated race differences in the relationship between formal volunteering and hypertension prevalence among middle-aged and older adults. METHOD Using data from the 2004 and 2006 Health and Retirement Study (N = 5,666; 677 African Americans and 4,989 whites), we examined regression models stratified by race to estimate relationships among hypertension prevalence, sys...

OBJECTIVES This study sought to understand the relationship between volunteer activity and happiness among a sample of older adult New Zealanders. It specifically sought to determine if ethnicity (Māori vs. non-Māori) and economic living standards (ELS) functioned as moderators of the relationship between volunteering and happiness. METHOD Data were garnered from the 2008 administration of th...