Do community needs affect the decision to volunteer? The case of refugees in Germany

Annalisa Tassi

No 238, Working Papers from Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE)

Abstract: I study the relationship between changes in community needs and the supply of voluntary work. I present basic theoretical considerations, which suggest that the relationship between voluntary work and an increase in community needs is ambiguous. Then, I test the relationship empirically by proxying community needs with the number of needy people, i.e., refugees, in a county, and by exploiting the quasi-experiment of refugees’ allocation within Germany. I find that doubling the number of refugees increases the probability of volunteering by about 2 percentage points. These estimates imply that 1.45 million people additionally volunteered during the refugee crisis, i.e., more than one person per refugee.

Keywords: Voluntary Work; Community Needs; Refugee Crisis; Quasi-experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 H49 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig and nep-soc
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