Falling rates of volunteering has been blamed on economic conditions and changed behaviours following the 2008 global financial crisis.
United States-based research, led by the University of Georgia, said the recession 16 years ago had the biggest “dampening” impact on volunteering in high income, high growth areas.
“What the decline in volunteering tells us is that there are a lot of communities that were hit by the recession and just haven’t bounced back,” Lead author Rebecca Nesbit said.
“Whether that decline is going to continue or whether these communities will rebound eventually, we don’t know yet.”
Professor Nesbit said rural areas traditionally had higher volunteering rates than urban ones.
“These communities often have closer ties and more social interaction with each other, and those close ties may make them more likely to volunteer,” she said.
“Because when you’re volunteering for the local food bank in these communities, you’re helping people that you have a personal connection to.”
The demographics of these rural communities were changing, with more young people moving to bigger cities.
The researchers also found that people living in disadvantaged communities or areas with have high levels of economic inequality were less likely to volunteer.
Professor Nesbit said more than a decade and a half after the deep recession in the US, volunteering rates were yet to recover.
“Any advantage to volunteering afforded by good economic growth before the recession was wiped out after the recession, and that can lead people to change their behavior,” she said.
“In poor economic conditions, people might take energy away from their voluntary activities to put it into more income-producing activities that create a greater sense of personal stability.”
The study used volunteering data in a secure U.S. Census Bureau Research Data Center, which is a nationally representative sample of 56,000 households interviewed each month.
“One general high-level finding is that local economic conditions matter for volunteering. That’s something we can’t ignore,” Professor 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.”
The full report is on the University of Georgia website
