Jasper Mitchell
Research Mentor: Seoyoun Kim
Mentor Department: ICPSR, ISR
Author(s): Jasper Mitchell, Seoyoun Kim
Session: Session 4 (1:00 PM – 1:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 90
Abstract
The existing literature has found that volunteering significantly impacts a variety of health outcomes for the volunteer, with volunteers having reduced risk of mortality, better self reported health, fewer depressive symptoms, and increased life satisfaction. Despite the well-documented health benefits of volunteering, there are mixed findings regarding the optimal amount of volunteering. Some studies suggest that there is a direct, linear relationship between volunteering hours/year and health. Others found a plateau after a certain point, while some studies found a peak, followed by a decrease in health as volunteering hours increased. In order to address this question, this study uses the 2014 and 2018 waves of the Health and Retirement study (HRS), a large, longitudinal data set of older Americans, along with detailed volunteering information from the 2015 and 2017 waves of the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS), to determine whether the relationship between volunteering and health follows a linear or curvilinear pattern. By comparing volunteering hours in 2015 and 2017 with self-reported health, depressive symptoms, and life satisfaction in 2018, we can analyze whether there is a point at which increased volunteering hours no longer increases or even decreases the health of the volunteers. Potential results could indicate a linear relationship, where both physical and psychological health measures improved at a constant rate as volunteer hours increased. The results could also indicate a threshold response, where after a certain number of volunteering hours/year, health measures either stop improving or start to worsen. This would give a clearer picture of how volunteering affects health outcomes at high levels of volunteering. These results would be of particular importance because they use recent, longitudinal data from one of the largest aging data sets available. This would help guide public health guidelines and make volunteering more useful as a health intervention for older Americans.
