Arbeitspapier

Volunteering, happiness and public policy

Is the activity of volunteering something that benefits the volunteer as well as the recipient of the volunteer's activities? We analyze this relationship and apply matching estimators to the large-scale British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data set to estimate the causal impact of volunteering on happiness. We take into account personality traits that could jointly determine volunteering behaviour and happiness. We find that the causal impact of volunteering on happiness is positive and increasing over time if 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. We test the robustness of our findings and discuss their relevance for public policy.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: Jena Economic Research Papers ; No. 2012,013

Classification
Wirtschaft
Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
Subject
volunteering
happiness
altruism
generosity
public policy
BHPS

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Binder, Martin
Freytag, Andreas
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics
(where)
Jena
(when)
2012

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Binder, Martin
  • Freytag, Andreas
  • Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics

Time of origin

  • 2012

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