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The Gerontologist Advance Access published online on August 7, 2009
The Gerontologist, doi:10.1093/geront/gnp122
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Dynamics of Volunteering in Older Europeans

Karsten Hank, PhD1,2 and Marcel Erlinghagen, PhD3

2 Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
3 Institute for Works, Skills and Training, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

1 Address correspondence to Karsten Hank, PhD, Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, University of Mannheim, Building L13, 17, 68131 Mannheim, Germany. E-mail: hank{at}mea.uni-mannheim.de


  Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the dynamics of volunteering in the population aged 50 years or older across 11 Continental European countries. Design and Methods: Using longitudinal data from the first 2 waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we run multivariate regressions on a set of binary-dependent variables indicating transitions from active volunteering to inactivity and vice versa. Results: Volunteer transitions were affected by both time-invariant individual resources and changes in individuals’ resources. Moreover, we found that the societal context in which older persons live not only has a significant impact on the prevalence of volunteering at a given point in time but that the dynamics of volunteering also vary by country. Implications: Our study supports the notion of volunteering as an important productive aging activity and underlines the importance of both life-course and social context factors as determinants of volunteer dynamics at older ages.

Keywords: Volunteering, Productive aging, Life course

Received April 15, 2009; Accepted July 13, 2009

Decision Editor: William J. McAuley, PhD


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