Volunteering, subjective well-being and public policy

Martin Binder and Andreas Freytag ()

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2013, vol. 34, issue C, 97-119

Abstract: We apply matching estimators to the large-scale British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data set to estimate the impact of volunteering on subjective well-being. We take into account personality traits that could jointly determine volunteering behaviour and subjective well-being. We find that the impact of regular volunteering on subjective well-being is positive and increasing over time if regular volunteering is sustained. In a quantile analysis, we find that this effect seems to be driven by reducing the unhappiness of the less happy quantiles of the well-being distribution for those who volunteer regularly. We test the robustness of our findings and discuss their relevance for public policy.

Keywords: 2223; 3000; Volunteering; Subjective well-being; Personality; Public policy; BHPS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D6 D64 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (66)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:34:y:2013:i:c:p:97-119

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2012.11.008

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