Volunteering After Retirement

Abstract

In view of the steady growth in life expectancy in recent decades the question is increasingly being raised whether and how older people should be encouraged to be more active, and particularly to engage in unpaid voluntary work. Taking adult life as a whole the conditions for such charitable involvement would appear to be especially favourable after retirement. However, these analyses, which are based on German longitudinal data, show that the effect of entering retirement is often exaggerated. Rather, the individual's previous volunteering experiences are of major importance in his decision to take up and continue voluntary work in later life. At the same time the analyses show how important the major resources of health and education are, particularly for participation in voluntary work during ageing.

Occupation, Prestige, and Voluntary Work in Retirement: Empirical Evidence from Germany

“…Starting with M1, we notice a negative age effect: the older a person gets, the less likely it becomes that they will enter into volunteering. Second, and similar to previous findings, a higher degree of education has a strong effect on volunteering at an older age (Chambré, 1997;Choi, 2003;Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006;Erlinghagen, 2010). Contrary to our expectations, women had a lower propensity to transition into volunteering than men.…”

“…When coming to satisfaction with one's work as an indicator for the intrinsic motivation to volunteer, all models show a positive, but insignificant effect. In line with previous studies M1 shows that the more experience a person has in volunteering, the more likely it becomes that the same person will also volunteer in a later stage of life (Erlinghagen, 2010;Butrica et al, 2009). This effect holds true over all three models.…”

“…Previous studies show that doing volunteer work in retirement is more likely if a person has gained related experience earlier in life (Butrica et al, 2009;Erlinghagen, 2010). This makes it plausible to assume that the postulated prestigecompensation effect should also be observable for active workers before they enter retirement.…”

“…been shown that the level of education and the household net income positively impact on the volunteering of older actors (Chambré, 1997;Choi, 2003;Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006;Erlinghagen, 2010;Tang, 2006;Börsch-Supan et al, 2009), that retired women are more engaged than men (Choi, 2003;Tang, 2006;Hank, 2011), and that prior volunteering experience (Butrica et al, 2009;Erlinghagen, 2010) and a higher degree of physical and mental health increases the likelihood to volunteer in old age (Broese van Groenou, Marjolein and van Tilburg, 2012;Caro and Bass, 1997;Choi, 2003;Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006;Komp et al, 2012;Li and Ferraro, 2006). However, little is known about the effect of an actor's (previous) employment.…”

“…Furthermore employment status was controlled for (0 = active, 1 = retired (Choi, 2003;Tang, 2006;Hank, 2011), marital status (Broese van Groenou, Marjolein and van Tilburg, 2012), living in the former East Germany (Erlinghagen, 2010) and education (Chambré, 1997;Choi, 2003;Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006, Erlinghagen, 2010, 2010, Tang, 2006Börsch-Supan et al, 2009;Hank, 2011).…”