New research from the University of Georgia suggests the economy may be to blame for declining volunteering rates in U.S culture.
The study relied on a dataset of about 90,000 individuals for each year of the survey, pulled from confidential volunteering data in a U.S Census Bureau Research Data Center, a nationally representative sample of 56,000 households interviewed each month.
Researchers examined effects of economic disadvantage, and how the Great Recession exacerbated existing differences in volunteering rates between rural and urban communities.
People living in disadvantaged communities or areas of high economic inequality were less likely to volunteer, a finding that contradicts with past trends according to Rebecca Nesbit, lead author of the study and a professor in UGA’s School of Public and International Affairs.
“Historically, rural areas have had higher volunteering rates than urban ones,” Nesbit said. “These communities often have closer ties and more social interaction with each other, and those close ties may make them more likely to volunteer.”
But the demographics of rural communities are changing, with more youth leaving their hometowns for bigger cities while the population left behind ages. That shift in people’s sense of community may be one reason these communities’ volunteering rates dropped so significantly, the researchers said.
Nesbits team determined that the biggest dampening effect underlying declining charitable initiative in areas with the most economic growth and above average income equality was the 2008 recession, which volunteering rates have yet to recover from more than a decade and a half later.
Even years after the recession ended, the negative effects persisted, which may indicate lingering social or psychological effects that make people more hesitant to invest time and resources into volunteer efforts, the researchers said.
“One general high-level finding is that local economic conditions matter for volunteering.
That’s something we can’t ignore,” Nesbit said. “An implication of that is that as we talk about economic development for communities, we shouldn’t divorce that from the civic development of communities.
“Policymakers need to understand that if we want to strengthen communities, particularly these rural communities, we need a more holistic approach. It can't just be about economic development, and it can't just be about civic engagement. It has to be both.”
Published Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, the study was co-authored by Laurie Paarlberg, of Indiana University – Indianapolis, and Suyeon Jo, of the University of Arizona Tucson.
