IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mdl/mdlpap/0305.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Volunteering for Non-profit Organizations on Social Capital Formation: Evidence from a Statewide Survey

Author

Listed:
  • Jane Kolodinsky
  • Garret Kimberly
  • Jonathan Isham

Abstract

We use the household production framework to theoretically connect sociability and purposive incentives for volunteering and two forms of social capital: social connections and civic capacity. Then, using a unique statewide data set, we estimate the determinants of (a) the probability of receiving social capital benefits and (b) the level of such benefits. We show that: religious and social service organizations have a large impact on social capital formation; the probability of being socially and civically engaged increases with volunteering; and two-adult families are more likely to feel socially and civically engaged. These results are consistent with recent aggregate evidence on the decline of social capital in the United States: social capital formation declines with less religious and altruistic orientation at the community level, and as families move away from a two-adult family structure. By contrast, through volunteering, one can increase the likelihood of being socially and civically engaged.

Suggested Citation

  • Jane Kolodinsky & Garret Kimberly & Jonathan Isham, 2003. "The Effects of Volunteering for Non-profit Organizations on Social Capital Formation: Evidence from a Statewide Survey," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0305, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mdl:mdlpap:0305
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.middlebury.edu/services/econ/repec/mdl/ancoec/0305.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
    2. Stephan Meier & Alois Stutzer, 2008. "Is Volunteering Rewarding in Itself?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(297), pages 39-59, February.
    3. Gilbert Ghez & Gary S. Becker, 1975. "The Allocation of Time and Goods over the Life Cycle," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number ghez75-1.
    4. Cragg, John G, 1971. "Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 829-844, September.
    5. Edward L. Glaeser & David Laibson & Bruce Sacerdote, 2002. "An Economic Approach to Social Capital," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(483), pages 437-458, November.
    6. Kathleen Day & Rose Annue Devlin, 1998. "The Payoff to Work without Pay: Volunteer Work as an Investment in Human Capital," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 31(5), pages 1179-1191, November.
    7. Knack, Stephen, 2000. "Social capital and the quality of Government : evidence from the U.S. States," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2504, The World Bank.
    8. Narayan, Deepa & Pritchett, Lant, 1999. "Cents and Sociability: Household Income and Social Capital in Rural Tanzania," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(4), pages 871-897, July.
    9. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    10. Lin, Tsai-Fen & Schmidt, Peter, 1984. "A Test of the Tobit Specification against an Alternative Suggested by Cragg," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(1), pages 174-177, February.
    11. Gilbert Ghez & Gary S. Becker, 1975. "The Allocation of Goods Over the Life Cycle," NBER Chapters, in: The Allocation of Time and Goods over the Life Cycle, pages 46-82, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Gilbert Ghez & Gary S. Becker, 1975. "The Allocation of Time Over the Life Cycle," NBER Chapters, in: The Allocation of Time and Goods over the Life Cycle, pages 83-132, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. O. Hawrylyshyn, 1978. "The economic nature and value of volunteer activity in Canada," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-71, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bartolini, Stefano & Bonatti, Luigi, 2008. "Endogenous growth, decline in social capital and expansion of market activities," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(3-4), pages 917-926, September.
    2. Joseph J. Sabia & Joseph P. Price & H. Elizabeth Peters & Reginald Covington, 2018. "The effect on teenage childbearing on social capital development: new evidence on civic engagement," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 629-659, September.
    3. Sauer, Robert M. & Wilson, John & Mantovan, Noemi, 2019. "The Economic Benefits of Volunteering and Social Class," IZA Discussion Papers 12713, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Diasakos, Theodoros M & Neymotin, Florence, 2013. "Coordination in Public Good Provision: How Individual Volunteering is Impacted by the Volunteering of Others," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-119, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    5. Stefano Bartolini & Luigi Bonatti, 2006. "How Can the Decline in Social Capital be Reconciled with a Satisfactory Growth Performance?," Department of Economics University of Siena 477, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    6. Florence Neymotin, 2016. "Individuals and Communities: the Importance of Neighbors Volunteering," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 149-178, June.
    7. Bartolini, Stefano & Bonatti, Luigi, 2008. "The role of social capital in enhancing factor productivity: Does its erosion depress per capita GDP?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1539-1553, August.
    8. Theodoros M. Diasakos & Florence Neymotin, 2011. "Community Matters: How the Volunteering of Others Affects One's Likelihood of Engaging in Volunteer Work," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 209, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    9. Diasakos, Theodoros M & Neymotin, Florence, 2013. "Coordination in Public Good Provision: How Individual Volunteering is Impacted by the Volunteering of Others," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-119, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James J. Heckman, 2015. "Introduction to A Theory of the Allocation of Time by Gary Becker," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(583), pages 403-409, March.
    2. Alma Espino & Fernando Isabella & Martí­n Leites & Alina Machado, 2012. "Elasticidad intertemporal y no compensada de la oferta laboral. Evidencia para el caso uruguayo," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 12-18, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    3. Ariel Goldszmidt & John A. List & Robert D. Metcalfe & Ian Muir & V. Kerry Smith & Jenny Wang, 2020. "The Value of Time in the United States: Estimates from Nationwide Natural Field Experiments," NBER Working Papers 28208, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Bruce E. Kaufman, 2010. "Chicago and the Development of Twentieth-Century Labor Economics," Chapters, in: Ross B. Emmett (ed.), The Elgar Companion to the Chicago School of Economics, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4459 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Charlotte Guénard & Sandrine Mesplé-Somps, 2004. "Measuring inequalities: Do the surveys give the real picture? Study of two surveys in Cote d’Ivoire and Madagascar," Working Papers DT/2004/13, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation), revised Dec 2004.
    7. Jorge Gonzalez Chapela, 2011. "Recreation, home production, and intertemporal substitution of female labor supply: evidence on the intensive margin," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(3), pages 532-548, July.
    8. Zamnius, Alexey & Polbin, Andrey, 2021. "Estimating intertemporal elasticity of substitution of labor supply for married women in Russia," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 64, pages 23-48.
    9. Grossman, Michael, 2006. "Education and Nonmarket Outcomes," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 577-633, Elsevier.
    10. Otto Lenhart, 2018. "More than just the Adoption of Western Capitalism? Time Use Changes in East Germany Following Reunification," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 306-328, September.
    11. Dittrich, Marcus & Mey, Bianka, 2021. "Giving time or giving money? On the relationship between charitable contributions," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    12. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:3-102 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Vasilev, Aleksandar, 2015. "Welfare gains from the adoption of proportional taxation in a general-equilibrium model with a grey economy: the case of Bulgaria's 2008 flat tax reform," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 48(2), pages 169-185.
    14. de la Croix, David & Gosseries, Axel, 2012. "The natalist bias of pollution control," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 271-287.
    15. Feigenbaum, James, 2008. "Can mortality risk explain the consumption hump?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 844-872, September.
    16. Aydilek, Asiye, 2016. "The allocation of time and puzzling profiles of the elderly," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 515-526.
    17. Valerie A. Ramey & Neville Francis, 2009. "A Century of Work and Leisure," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 189-224, July.
    18. Yongsung Chang & Mark Bils, 2002. "Cyclical Movements in Hours and Effort under Sticky Wages," Macroeconomics 0204004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Dagmar Brožová, 2010. "Individual Labour Supply Decisions with Respect To Household Production and Over the Life Cycle [Rozhodování o individuální nabídce práce s ohledem na produkci domácnosti a v průběhu životního cykl," Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2010(1), pages 21-33.
    20. Rosen, Sherwin, 1985. "Implicit Contracts: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 23(3), pages 1144-1175, September.
    21. Philip Trostel & Ian Walker, 2006. "Education and Work," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 377-399.
    22. Yoo-Mi Chin, 2008. "A household production model of demand for childcare and meals: theory and evidence from the Philippines," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 47-64, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    household production; civic engagement; social capital;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mdl:mdlpap:0305. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vijaya Wunnava (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.