Wilson PDF

694 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
WHO CARES?
TOWARD AN INTEGRATED THEORY OF VOLUNTEER WORK*
John Wilson Marc Musick

Duke University Duke University
We construct an integrated theory of formal and informal volunteer work

based on the premises that volunteer work is (1) productive work that re-
quires human capital, (2) collective behavior that requires social capital,
and (3) ethically guided work that requires cultural capital. Using educa-
tion, income, and functional health to measure human capital, number of
children in the household and informal social interaction to measure social
capital, and religiosity to measure cultural capital, we estimate a model in
which formal volunteering and informal helping are reciprocally related but
connected in different ways to different forms of capital. Using two-wave
data from the Americans’ Changing Lives panel study, we find that formal
volunteering is positively related to human capital, number of children in
the household, informal social interaction, and religiosity. Informal helping,
such as helping a neighbor, is primarily determined by gender, age, and
health. Estimation of reciprocal effects reveals that formal volunteering has
a positive effect on helping, but helping does not affect formal volunteering.
I n their “mapping of work’s diverse

forms,” Tilly and Tilly (1994) distinguish
four regions of work: the world of labor mar-
done by women) often dismissed as “unpro-
ductive” because it is unpaid (Herzog et al.
1989). It is also consistent with the view that
kets, the informal sector, household labor, volunteering is simply one of several kinds
and volunteer work. They define volunteer of productive activity, distinguished in that it
work as “unpaid work provided to parties to has “a market value greater than any remu-
whom the worker owes no contractual, famil- neration received” (Smith 1981:23). In other
ial, or friendship obligations” (p. 291). Vol- words, the map conceptually separates vol-
unteer work, unlike the labor market and the unteering from altruism. The contribution of
informal sector, is uncommodified; unlike altruistic values or motivation to volunteer-
household labor, it is freely undertaken. ing becomes an empirical question rather
Thus, volunteering is identified as a type of than a theoretical assumption.
work—“human effort that adds use value to Thinking about volunteer work as a pro-
goods and services” (p. 291). This view is ductive activity steers the investigation to-
consistent with recent studies of volunteer- ward the “inputs” needed to do it. One of our
ing that broaden the definition of “produc- principal aims in this paper is to identify
tive activities” to include labor (much of it these resources and show how they are re-
lated to volunteering. Our other principal aim
* Direct correspondence to John Wilson, De- is to broaden Tilly and Tilly’s (1994) defini-
partment of Sociology, Duke University, tion of volunteer work to include the myriad
Durham, North Carolina 27708. We thank Alan informal ways of “helping out,” such as run-
Kerckhoff, Kenneth Land, Nan Lin, Xueguang ning errands for an elderly neighbor, that
Zhou, and the previous ASR editor (Paula En- should also be treated as productive activity.
gland) and ASR reviewers for their helpful com-
This informal volunteer work is done prima-
ments. This research was supported in part by a
grant from the National Institute of Aging (Grant rily by women, and it receives little recogni-
#AG00139) and by a grant from the Center for tion. Our analysis includes both formal vol-
the Study of Philanthropy and Voluntarism, Duke unteering and informal helping but does not
University. treat them as if they were the same. To
694 American Sociological Review, 1997, Vol. 62 (October:694–713)

WHO CARES? TOWARD AN INTEGRATED THEORY OF VOLUNTEER WORK 695
achieve some conceptual and theoretical par- Oliver 1993:102). This is also true of many
simony, we refer to both as “volunteer work,” instances of volunteering. How long will you
but we distinguish them by their level of for- pick up litter in your neighborhood if you do
mality. not see anyone else doing it and your soli-
tary effort has little impact? How much
longer would you do this if the clean-up
A SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF
campaign were an adjunct to an organization
VOLUNTEER WORK
to which you belonged or was part of a fund-
Volunteers give their time freely for the ben- raising effort by the school which your child
efit of others. This brief characterization attends? Clearly, your decision to volunteer
does not deny that benefits may accrue to the is affected as much by what other people are
donor; nor does it rule out altruistic motives. thinking and doing as by what you are think-
However, this definition does not require us ing and doing.
to establish a “return” on the gift or a “right” Social networks, or social ties generally,
motive. “The essence of volunteerism is not are resources for collective action (McAdam
altruism, but rather the contribution of ser- 1989; Oberschall 1993). These resources are
vices, goods, or money to help accomplish a form of “social capital.” While human capi-
some desired end, without substantial coer- tal is lodged in individuals, social capital
cion or direct remuneration” (Smith 1981: comes from the relations among individuals
33).1 (Coleman 1988:S98). Social ties, including
Our theory of volunteer work is based on friendship networks and organizational
several premises. memberships, supply information, foster
(1) Volunteer work is a productive activity. trust, make contacts, provide support, set
It is much like any other form of work (paid guidelines, and create obligations. They
or unpaid), rather than a simple act of con- make volunteer work more likely by foster-
sumption or a leisure time pursuit with ing norms of generalized reciprocity, encour-
purely expressive goals. Many volunteers aging people to trust each other, and ampli-
(e.g., firefighters) eventually become paid fying reputations (Putnam 1995:67). They go
employees (Pearce 1993:35). A market exists a long way toward eliminating the free-rider
for volunteer labor, much like the market for problem.
paid labor. As in any labor market, admission (3) The volunteer-recipient relationship is
to and performance in this market is condi- an ethical one. It is “ultimately mobilized
tional on “qualifications.” and regulated by moral incentives” (Scher-
(2) To a varying degree, volunteer work in- vish 1995:5). When asked why they volun-
volves collective action. This is less true of teer, people often speak in terms of ethics: “I
the informal volunteering we refer to as feel it is important to help others”; “I feel
“helping,” and this difference plays an im- compassion toward people in need”; “I can
portant part in our analysis. However, much do something for a cause that is important to
formal volunteer work is undertaken on be- me” (Hodgkinson and Weitzman 1992:243).
half of a collective good, such as clearing lit- Of course, such statements may simply be
ter from public spaces, where the benefits are the “vocabulary of motives” people use to
not confined to those who actually pay. The account for behavior inspired by ulterior pur-
pursuit of collective goods poses free-rider poses, such as advancing their careers (Smith
problems. 1981:25). Nevertheless, volunteer work
Studies of collective action demonstrate means that people give their time to others.
that social networks are essential for over- We have no right to dismiss as rationaliza-
coming free-rider problems (Marwell and tions of material interests people’s state-
ments of commitment to ideals of justice,
1 We deal here only with nonspontaneous and fairness, caring and social responsibility
repeated volunteer activities. We do not attempt (Wuthnow 1991). Most social exchanges are
to describe or explain spontaneous helping behav- guided by value imperatives that provide
ior, such as stopping to give assistance to an au- motives for behavior other than naked greed
tomobile accident victim. These forms of altru- (Parsons 1951:37; Portes and Sensenbrenner
ism probably have different antecedents. 1993: 1323).
Rather than invoking ethical values to ac- peaceful, and responsible are altogether ab-
count for behavior on an ad hoc basis (i.e., sent from Bourdieu’s semeiotic analysis”
people volunteer because they think volun- (Lamont 1992:185). “Taste” should refer not
teering is a good thing), we conceptualize only to musical selection, but also to ideas
values as usable resources, or capital. “The of fair treatment and responsible conduct.
term ‘capital’ as part of a concept implies a Cultural capital makes it easier to acquire
resource or factor input that facilitates pro- and consume symbolic goods. Symbolic
duction, but is not consumed or otherwise goods are not themselves values but they ex-
used up in production” (Coleman 1994:175). press values. The possession of symbolic
At the individual level, capital refers to goods enables people to “act out” their val-
work-relevant skills and material resources ues, to demonstrate their “good taste.” While
(e.g., tools, transportation, credit) that indi- we recognize volunteering as a form of work,
viduals bring to jobs. At the relational level, we also recognize it as a form of consump-
capital is any aspect of social organization tion. This is not a contradiction. Volunteer
that constitutes a productive resource. At the work involves both the production of a good
cultural level, capital consists of attitudes, or service and the consumption of a symbolic
knowledge, and preferences (that may be good. Thus, tutoring in a literacy program
embodied in objects and practices) to which has both real and symbolic value—the stu-
the word “taste” is often applied. dent learns to read and the tutor “acts out”
It is not self-evident that culture is capital. her identity as a caring and compassionate
Cultural capital, unlike economic capital, is person (Wuthnow 1991:89). It is leisure as
not recognized as having been produced or work; it is work as leisure. It expresses si-
accumulated, but is treated as natural, as multaneously the value of useful leisure and
when we attribute taste and refinement to meaningful work.
“breeding.”2 Nevertheless, culture is indeed Before we can conceptualize volunteer
acquired, sometimes unwittingly. Like any work as a symbolic good, we must expand
other form of capital, it can be “invested” to the definition of cultural capital to incorpo-
yield “social profits” in the form of symbolic rate the moral component in culture, thus
goods, such as titles, honors, and club mem- connecting the idea of cultural capital with
berships. These “social profits,” in turn, yield more conventional ways of thinking about
social esteem, which is denied to those who culture as rules (Peterson 1979:160). If ap-
lack cultural capital. preciating fine wine is considered a mark of
Bourdieu’s (1986) writings, which have in- elite status, why isn’t being a good citizen
fluenced many sociologists’ thinking about also evidence of elite status (Lamont and
cultural capital, have dealt almost exclu- Lareau 1988:158)? Doesn’t charitable work
sively with the aesthetic component of cul- demonstrate one’s “taste” for volunteering
ture (i.e., learned competencies, such as the (Verba, Scholzman, and Brody 1995:353)?
appreciation of good wine). This view over- Might not volunteer work be regarded as
emphasizes the cognitive and neglects the honorable work, bestowing status, in the
moral component of culture—“moral refer- same way that being a member of the “right”
ences such as honest, truthful, fair, good, club confers prestige (Daniels 1988:19)?
Thus, robber barons legitimate their fortunes
2 Bourdieu (1986) developed the idea of cul- by giving them away. Today, elected officials
tural capital to help account for the educational preach the message that volunteer work is a
and occupational advantages the upper classes patriotic duty, reminding Americans of the
enjoyed over the lower classes, which could not distinction of being a caring people (Beebe,
be explained entirely in terms of intelligence or Snyder, and Mortimer 1994)—and most
genetic endowments. Equally important were Americans are highly receptive to the mes-
manners, dress, speech, and aesthetic discrimina- sage. Three out of four believe “helping
tion. Bourdieu expanded this idea to embrace a
wide range of consumption activities, from eat-
people in need” is “essential” or “very im-
ing to sports, and showed that different social portant” to them (Wuthnow 1991:10). Volun-
classes have different culture preferences, some teer work is “a way of dramatizing that one
preferences considered much more desirable than is a good and decent person” (Wuthnow
others. 1994:241). This culture of benevolence is an
important resource upon which to draw for tween formal and informal volunteer work—
volunteer work. Referring to this resource as the more one volunteers, the less one helps
“capital” seems entirely appropriate. informally. On the other hand, some sociolo-
Bourdieu (1986:243) sees cultural capital gists (Gallagher 1994) suggest that certain
as institutionalized “in the form of educa- people have a general disposition to do
tional qualifications,” but this is a narrow good—hours devoted to formal volunteering
measure of cultural capital. We need to mea- are positively related to hours devoted to in-
sure how the culture of benevolence is formal helping. If this is true, formal and in-
learned. How do people decide who deserves formal volunteering should be positively re-
help, who should provide it, and how it lated.
should be provided? As Daniels (1988:3–27)
shows, knowledge about and a taste for “so-
MODELING VOLUNTEER WORK
cial housekeeping” are acquired in various
ways—from parents, spouses, and secondary It is well documented that volunteers tend to
associations. This “volunteer calling” is ab- occupy “dominant statuses” in society
sorbed as part of class and gender identities. (Smith 1994:247). We introduce few new
One way of judging people’s exposure to variables to the study of volunteer work. Our
the culture of benevolence is to ask them how goals are to clarify how these variables ar-
much value they attach to charitable work. In range themselves with respect to the depen-
the data set we use, respondents were asked dent variable and how the types of volunteer
how much they think living the good life de- work are connected to each other. We now
mands helping others. Although we use this describe a model for the estimation of for-
item, we are aware that this question has a mal volunteering; we then indicate how well
positive response bias problem. We therefore this model is expected to fit the data on in-
turn to a less direct but more institutionalized formal, helping behavior.
source of the culture of benevolence. We
know that, historically, churches have pro-
Exogenous Factors
moted the culture of benevolence (Wuthnow
1990:3). We also know that religious reasons We treat age, gender, and race as exogenous
frequently are given for undertaking volun- factors not subject to change as a result of
teer work (Wuthnow 1991:51). This suggests changes in the other variables in the model.
that the culture of benevolence is institution- We consider the possibility that there are un-
alized in churches (more so than in work- mediated, direct effects of age, gender, and
places or schools). If this is true, religious race on volunteer work, but we believe these
practice should increase the likelihood of vol- factors are important chiefly because they
unteering (Hodgkinson 1995:31). We there- make a difference to other intervening fac-
fore treat religiosity as one indicator of the tors in the model (i.e., their effect is indi-
cultural capital necessary for volunteering. 3 rect).4
(4) Our final premise is that different types Women consistently rate themselves (and
of volunteer work are related to each other. are rated by others) as more empathic and al-
One purpose of our research is to discover truistic than men (Greeno and Maccoby
what that relationship is. Wuthnow (1991: 1993:195). Culture allocates to women the
201) argues that formal volunteering, being role of maintaining the “public household”
more institutionalized, absorbs compassion (Daniels 1988). Some studies show that
and limits people’s other contacts with the women are more likely than men to have vol-
needy. This suggests a negative relation be-
4 The same assumption is generally made in
3 Our tripartite division of capital into human, studies of participation in the conventional labor
social, and cultural capital parallels that made by force. Gender and race are important: “However,
Verba et al. (1995:16), who ask why some people these individual differences are generally pre-
do not participate in local politics. They give sumed to be specious, not indicators of innate dif-
three answers: (1) They lack the human resources, ferences in human capital. That is, it is assumed
(2) they are isolated from networks of recruit- that economic success does not vary ‘naturally’
ment, or (3) they refuse to because they have no with them but is socially produced” (Shanahan
“taste” for that kind of work. and Tuma 1994:747).
unteered in the past year (Hodgkinson and it is measuring the effect of declining func-
Weitzman 1992:59). Others report that men tional health. In our multivariate analyses,
are more likely than women to volunteer we test for both linear and curvilinear effects
(Hayghe 1991). A third group of studies con- of age on rates of volunteering.
cludes that the gender effect is spurious be-
cause it disappears when controls for socio-
economic status are imposed (Herzog et al. Human Capital
1989:S135; Smith 1994:248; Sundeen 1988; One set of endogenous factors we consider
1990). Gallagher (1994:573) found that men describes “human capital.” Human capital is
belong to more voluntary organizations but a shorthand term for those resources attached
that they devote no more time to volunteer- to individuals that make productive activities
ing than do women. We estimate direct and possible. Variations in human capital are rou-
indirect effects of gender and expect to find tinely used to explain individual differences
that women volunteer at higher rates than in labor force participation, productivity, and
men once controls are imposed. rewards. Thus, the “rate of return” on educa-
Carson (1989) documents a “long presti- tion in the labor market can be precisely cal-
gious tradition of philanthropic activity that culated (Coleman 1994:175). These factors
has existed in the black community” (p. 96). should help explain volunteer work: Human
Recent ethnographic research reveals a pat- capital qualifies a person for volunteer work
tern of reciprocity and mutual aid within the and makes that person more attractive to
Black community that arises as a necessary agencies seeking volunteer labor.
adjustment to economic hardship (Stack Sociologists have not identified a finite set
1974). However, empirical evidence on the of individual resources called “human capi-
impact of minority group status on formal tal.” What counts as capital depends on what
volunteer work yields mixed results. Neither is being produced. In studies of regular em-
Carson (1989) nor Latting (1990:122) find ployment, education is frequently identified
race differences in volunteerism once socio- as capital because it is required for the suc-
economic status is controlled. Gallagher cessful performance of many jobs. Volunteer
(1994) finds that Blacks “spend less time work should be similarly affected. Education
helping primary kin and volunteering, but is capital to the extent that volunteering pro-
slightly more time helping friends than do vides “the opportunity to exercise and/or
whites” (p. 573). Smith (1994:249) con- practice knowledge and skills that otherwise
cludes that, once other variables are con- could not be used” (Clary and Snyder
trolled, Blacks have slightly higher voluntary 1991:126). The positive impact of education
participation rates than do Whites (see also on voluntary participation has been con-
Auslander and Litwin 1988; for social par- firmed in many previous studies (Smith
ticipation more generally, see Bobo and 1994:248).
Gilliam 1990; Palisi and Korn 1989; Will- Income is another possible measure of hu-
iams and Ortega 1986). We test for the direct man capital. Income is often treated as an
and indirect effects of race but do not expect outcome variable (i.e., an effect of capital)
to find direct effects. in studies of conventional work. Further-
Age is relevant for the study of volunteer more, income does not fit the criterion of
work for several reasons. Age may be a mea- capital as being “not consumed or otherwise
sure of (volunteer) work experience. Some used up in production” (Coleman 1994:175).
people make a career out of volunteering— Nevertheless, we treat income as an indica-
“older volunteers are volunteers who have tor of human capital because, in association
aged” (Gallagher 1994:569). A positive ef- with education, it indicates “dominant sta-
fect of age could also reflect life-cycle ef- tus” (Smith 1994:247), which “qualifies” the
fects For example, single and childless individual for volunteer work. Wealthy indi-
people have lower volunteer rates (Hayghe viduals (≥ $75,000) are three times more
1991). Other considerations suggest a curvi- likely to be asked to volunteer than are poor
linear effect of age. Advancing years could individuals (< $10,000) (Hodgkinson 1995:
lower volunteer activity if age is measuring 44). Income also measures a person’s stake
a cohort effect (e.g., years of schooling) or if in community stability (Sundeen 1988:548).
We use a measure of family income rather sources are social in that they are “embed-
than the respondent’s personal income to as- ded” in personal networks. They become vis-
sess the impact of earnings on volunteer ible only when an individual’s relationships
work because we believe family income is a are examined (Lin 1995).
better indicator of social status. This is a dif- We have two indicators of social capital—
ferent way of thinking about the impact of informal social interaction and number of
earnings on volunteer work than is custom- children in the household. People who re-
ary among economists, who assume that port frequent conversations and meetings
people with higher earnings will volunteer with friends and acquaintances are more
less because their opportunity costs are likely to volunteer than people who rarely
higher (Iannaccone 1990; Steinberg 1990; get out or who have few friends. McPher-
Weisbrod 1988:134). Contrary to these ex- son, Popielarz, and Drobnic (1992) refer to
pectations, sociologists have consistently this as the “contact frequency” (p. 158) hy-
found a positive relation between income and pothesis. Our second indicator of social
volunteering (Clary and Snyder 1991:128; capital is less direct. We assume that re-
Hayghe 1991:20; Hodgkinson and Weitzman spondents who are parents of children still
1992:59; Pearce 1993:65; Smith 1994:248). living in the household will have more so-
(In our final analytical model, we combine cial contacts and higher rates of social inter-
education and income into a single measure action than childless people because their
of socioeconomic status because the two children draw them into community activi-
variables are highly correlated.) ties. It is well established that the presence
Our third measure of human capital is of children in a household increases volun-
health status. In the context of social ex- teerism (Smith 1994:250).5
change, good health is a resource; bad
health is a constraint (Hogan, Eggebeen,
Cultural Capital
and Clogg 1993:1450). The ability to do
volunteer work, or to assist those in need of One question in our data set directly mea-
help, depends on one’s physical capabilities. sures how much the respondent values help-
Our health variable is a construct that coming others. We also use religiosity as an indi-
bines measures of chronic illness and func- cator of cultural capital. Our theory predicts
tional impairment. While education and in- that religiosity prepares people for participa-
come are seen as indicators of socioeco- tion in volunteer work. Studies of religion
nomic status, functional health is conceptu- and volunteering find marked differences be-
alized as a form of human capital that de- tween religious and nonreligious respondents
pends on socioeconomic status. In other (Wilson and Janoski 1995). However, neither
words, health is an individual attribute or re- differences in intensity of beliefs nor theo-
source that can affect volunteering, yet it is logical differences have been found to deter-
the result of, rather than part of, other forms mine how much volunteer work is done
of human capital. In our analyses, socioeco- (Cnaan, Kasternakis, and Wineberg 1993). 6
nomic status is measured at time 1 of a two-
wave panel study, while health is measured 5 These are imperfect measures of social capi-
at time 2, three years later and at the same tal. Informal social interaction measures only the
time as formal volunteering and informal frequency with which respondents contact others.
helping. It says nothing about the range of social positions
occupied by these others, nothing about whether
or not these others know each other, and nothing
Social Capital about whether these others are currently volun-
People vary in how many social connections teering.
6 In our data set, conservative Protestants, Mor-
they have, what kind of social connections
mons, and “others” report above average rates of
they have, and whether or not those social volunteering, while Jews score below the mean.
connections are organized. Social connec- Only the differences between conservative Prot-
tions provide the resources—information, estants and other religious groups are statistically
pooled labor, trust—that make volunteering significant. Most volunteer work done by conser-
more likely (Smith 1994:253). These re- vative Protestants is for church-related groups.
Religious behavior seems to be a better pre- how much help is provided depends more on
dictor. We therefore model the effect of fre- factors such as ability or opportunity. This ex-
quency of religious prayer (a private form of plains why the amount of help children give
religious practice) and frequency of church their parents is so heavily influenced by how
attendance (a public practice). We treat far apart they live (Spitze and Logan 1992:
prayer and church attendance, which are 306). It also explains why patterns of inter-
highly correlated (r = .45), as part of a reli- generational help are influenced so much by
giosity latent construct. the needs of the recipient and the resources
Our causal model treats socioeconomic of the provider (Hogan et al. 1993:1454)
status as causally prior to social capital and We do not wish to make too much of this
cultural capital. Previous research has indi- distinction between the formal, voluntary na-
cated that more highly educated people have ture of volunteering and the informal, more
higher rates of informal social interaction obligatory, nature of helping. Most formal
than do less educated people (Curtis and volunteers are persuaded to volunteer by fam-
Jackson 1977:173). We also know, however, ily members, coworkers, or fellow worship-
that more highly educated people have fewer pers. Conversely, not all informal helping is
children than do less well-educated people. motivated by a sense of obligation. Neverthe-
Because more children means greater access less, the distinction is real and theoretically
to social capital, and because more social important. Formal volunteer work typically
capital means more volunteering, the indirect contributes to a collective good (e.g., help out
effect of education is to reduce the likelihood at the soup kitchen, clean litter from parks)
of volunteering. The effect of socioeconomic that makes “society” better, usually through
status on our indicators of cultural capital is an organization. We expect human capital to
less predictable: Higher socioeconomic sta- be more important for such activities and we
tus is associated with more frequent church expect social capital to play an important role
attendance (Chalfant, Beckley, and Palmer because collective action is required. How
1994:350) but less frequent prayer (Stark and much people help informally, on the other
Bainbridge 1987:48). hand, depends more on their ability to meet
the demand. Parents do not “volunteer” to
help their children out with baby-sitting.
VOLUNTEEERING AND HELPING
Based on these arguments, we anticipate sev-
Little is known about the relationship be- eral differences in the social foundations of
tween formal and informal types of volunteer formal and informal volunteer work.
work (but see Gallagher 1994). Formal vol-
unteering is typically carried out in the con-
text of organizations; informal volunteering Race
(which in this context means helping friends, Whereas Blacks are as likely as Whites to do
neighbors, and kin living outside the house- formal volunteer work, economic exigencies
hold) is more private and is not organized. make informal helping more important
Do these two types of volunteering have the among Blacks compared to Whites. We ex-
same determinants? Are they complements pect to find race differences in helping be-
or substitutes for each other? havior after human capital is controlled be-
Our major premise is that obligations have cause of the “bounded solidarity” of minor-
a more powerful influence on informal help- ity groups that inspires them to turn to each
ing than they do on formal volunteer work. In other for help rather than enter the market to
formal volunteer work, people give more satisfy their needs (Portes and Sensenbrenner
openly without a specific sense of obligation: 1993; Stack 1974).
“We feel . . . that it is important to help oth-
ers in general, but we do not feel obligated to
give a specific service to a specific indi- Gender
vidual” (Wuthnow 1991:95). In informal We expect to find only minor gender differ-
helping, the donor and recipient are likely to ences in volunteering, but the socialization of
already have a relationship that entails obli- women into nurturing roles and the evidence
gations (Amato 1990:31). In this situation, that they perform more caring work than do
men leads us to predict that being female will ing than it is in formal volunteering—people
have a positive effect on helping. Formal vol- with an obligation will help if they can.
unteering includes such heterogeneous ac-
tivities that both men and women are equally
Social Capital
likely to engage in it. Helping behavior, how-
ever, is more strictly gender-defined—it is a Helping is more private, volunteering more
woman’s job to hold families together (Ar- public; helping is more casual, volunteering
gyle 1991:212). Gallagher (1994:573) finds more organized. We do not expect social
that women are more likely to provide help capital to have the same impact on helping
than are men.7 and formal volunteering. Helping (outside
the household) is likely to be diminished by
the presence of children in the household be-
Age
cause children create more pressing obliga-
As people age, they accumulate obligations, tions, whereas we expect the presence of
in part because the pattern of familial help is children in the household to have a positive
from parents to children throughout the life effect on formal volunteering. We also expect
cycle. Obligations tend to peak in the middle informal social interaction to have a greater
years when both one’s children and one’s effect on formal volunteering than on help-
parents are likely to make demands. With in- ing because such interaction indicates the
creasing age, people are less likely to have individual’s embeddedness in a network of
elderly relatives to care for. Although Amato friends and acquaintances.
(1993:256) and Gallagher (1994:571) find
age negatively related to helping, they do not
control for health. We expect to find a curvi- Cultural Capital
linear relation between age and helping. Abstract values of benevolence do not dis-
criminate between help provided to strang-
ers and help provided to kin and friends, or
Human Capital
between organized help and casual help. We
We theorized that various individual at- assume that people who define the good life
tributes function as resources for volunteer as helping others will be more helpful. Given
work. The more private and informal nature the wording of the question, we expect the
of helping diminishes the importance of so- relationship with helping will be stronger
cioeconomic status. 8 Functional health will than the relationship with formal volunteer-
be more strongly related to variations in helping. We expect to find a difference in the im-
pact of religion on volunteering and helping.
7 More generally, “. . . women have been found
Because formal volunteering is more a mat-
to play a greater role both in maintaining kin net- ter of choice than is helping, we expect reli-
works and in providing help to those in the net- giosity to have a greater impact on volunteer-
works,” owing to “socialization related differ- ing than on helping. Our results should cor-
ences in nurturance and to differences in time
respond with those of Wuthnow (1994), who
availability” (Spitze and Logan 1992:293). This
pattern may reflect women’s greater “stake” in finds that church attendance is positively re-
the next generation because they are more likely lated to volunteering but not to “helping a
than men to need help from someone other than a relative or friend live through a personal cri-
spouse in later years. Also, women may have sis” (p. 241).
more skills in this less formal area of helping. We assume that volunteering and helping
8 Education should have less impact on help-
are related. We agree with Smith (1994:255)
ing because neither skills nor knowledge gained that participation in one kind of culturally
from schooling are necessarily of benefit. Income approved activity encourages participation in
also should not be important. We say this despite
others. In this case, volunteering and helping
the powerful argument that low-income families
are more likely to exhibit helping behavior than should be positively related. Gallagher
are middle-income families because low-income (1994) finds that “[t]otal hours spent helping
families must depend on kin and friends for help friends is a significant predictor of both
(e.g., child care) that middle-class families can hours of volunteering overall and hours of
afford to buy (Soldo and Hill 1993:198). charity work, while hours of volunteering is
a significant predictor of hours of help to Variables

friends” (p. 575). We model for reciprocal ef-
fects and assume they are positive. Volunteer index. Respondents were asked
Because we specify a causal relation be- whether they did volunteer work at any time
tween forms of capital and volunteer work, during the last 12 months. They were
we are concerned with the time order of be- prompted with the following options: (1)
haviors. For instance, we predict that high church, synagogue, or other religious orga-
levels of social capital lead to more volun- nization; (2) school or educational organiza-
teering. However, such a positive association tion; (3) political group or labor union; (4)
could also be interpreted as showing that vol- senior citizen group; and (5) other national
unteering is a way to make friends and accu- or local organization. The index was con-
mulate social capital. To deal with this prob- structed by summing the types of volunteer
lem, we use two waves of data. The volun- work the respondent reported.
teering and helping measures are taken in the Informal helping index. This index was
second wave of data collection, whereas all constructed by summing the types of help
other variables (except health status) are mea- given in the last 12 months by the respon-
sured in the first wave. Because we include dents to friends, neighbors, or relatives who
the first wave measures of volunteering and did not live with them, in the following ar-
helping in the model, we are conducting con- eas: (1) Provide transportation, shop, or run
ditional change analysis (Finkel 1995). errands; (2) help with housework or with the
upkeep of their house, car, or other things;
(3) do child care without pay; and (4) do any
DATA AND VARIABLES
other things.
The data are taken from a panel survey titled Volunteer hours. This variable measures
Americans’ Changing Lives, which used a the number of hours spent doing formal vol-
multistage stratified area probability sample unteer work during the past year. Midpoints
of persons 25 years of age or older who lived were assigned to category choices (less than
in the contiguous United States (House 20 hours, 20–39 hours, 40–79 hours, 80–159
1995). Blacks and persons over age 60 were hours, 160 hours or more), with 0 hours to
sampled at twice the rate of Whites under 60 those who did not participate and 200 hours
to facilitate comparisons by age and race. to those in the top category.
(We used a weight variable to adjust for these Informal helping hours. This variable
oversamples.) A total of 3,617 respondents measures the number of hours the respondent
were interviewed for the first wave in 1986, spent helping others during the past year.
while 2,867 respondents were available in Midpoints were assigned to category choices
the second wave during 1989. Of the 750 in- (less than 20 hours, 20–39 hours, 40–79
dividuals who were not surveyed during the hours, 80–159 hours, 160 hours or more),
second wave, 584 were living but did not re- with 0 hours to those who did not participate
spond and 166 had died. Respondents were and 200 hours to those in the top category.
surveyed in their homes by interviewers of Human capital. Education, defined as
the Survey Research Center. The first wave years of schooling completed, ranged from 0
had a response rate of 67 percent. Non- to 17 years. Family income was defined in 10
respondents did not differ from respondents intervals and ranged from $5,000 to over
by age, race, or other known characteristics. $80,000. Functional health is an index using
Missing values on the dependent variables six items indicating various types of func-
reduce the number of cases used to 2,854. 9 tional impairments. Index values ranged
from 1 to 4, where 1 indicates the most se-
9 Our data were made available by the Inter- vere functional impairment and 4 indicates
university Consortium for Political and Social no functional impairment. Chronic illness
Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The data for
Americans’ Changing Lives were originally col-
measures the number of chronic conditions
lected by James S. House. Neither the collector (0 to 10) the respondent experienced during
of the original data nor the consortium bears any the previous year. Possible conditions in-
responsibility for the analyses or interpretations cluded: arthritis or rheumatism, lung disease,
presented here. hypertension, heart trouble, diabetes, cancer,
foot problems, stroke, broken bones, and in- Table 1. Percentage Distribution of Two Char-
continence. acteristics of Formal Volunteering and
Social capital. Informal social interaction Informal Helping: Americans’ Chang-
ing Lives Survey, Second Wave, 1989
is measured by an index based on two items:
(1) how often during the typical week the Formal Informal
respondent talks on the telephone with Characteristic Volunteering Helping
friends, neighbors, or relatives; and (2) how
often the respondent gets together with Total Hours Spent Last Year
friends, relatives, or neighbors. A standard- 0 52.0 16.1
ized scale was constructed by taking the 10 16.1 18.7
arithmetic means of the two items. The in- 30 10.1 22.1
dex ranged from –3.074 to 1.35 (mean = 60 7.7 19.6
–.007). High scores indicate high social in- 120 6.4 12.2
teraction. Number of children in household
200+ 7.7 11.2
ranged from 0 to 7.
Cultural capital. Values helping is based Total 100.0 100.0
on an item asking respondents to agree or Mean 32.3 57.4
disagree with the statement “Life is not
worth living if one cannot contribute to the Number of Groups/Helping Activities Last Year
well-being of other people.” This item 0 52.0 16.8
ranged from 1 to 4. High scores indicate re- 1 26.1 20.6
spondents agree with the statement, low 2 13.4 34.7
scores mean disagreement. Church Atten- 3 5.5 27.2
dance is based on responses to the question 4 2.5 .7
“How often do you usually attend religious
services? Would you say more than once a 5 .5 —
week, once a week, 2 or 3 times a month, Total 100.0 100.0
about once a month, less than once a month, Mean .8 1.7
or never?” Responses ranged from 1 to 6.
High scores indicate more frequent atten-
dance. Prayer is based on responses to the The first step in our analysis is to estimate
question “When you have problems or diffi- the effects of the independent variables on
culties in your work, family or personal life, volunteering and helping, using OLS regres-
how often do you seek spiritual comfort and sion. Table 2 reports the zero-order correla-
support—almost always, often, sometimes, tions and the regression coefficients from the
rarely or never?” This variable ranges from 1 regression of formal volunteering and infor-
to 5. High values indicate more prayer. mal helping on the independent variables.
Background variables. These include gen- The volunteer index and the informal help
der (0 = male, 1 = female); age (measured in index at time 1 are entered as controls in the
years); race (0 = White, 1 = Black) regression models.
Table 2 indicates considerable stability in
volunteering and helping across the two
RESULTS
waves. If a person volunteered or helped in
Table 1 reports the percentage distributions the first wave in 1986, the chances are good
for volunteering and helping activities and that that person volunteered or helped in the
hours devoted to volunteering and helping in second wave in 1989. This relation provides
the past year. a baseline for the analysis that follows.
The percentage of respondents mentioning Education, number of children in the
at least one formal volunteer activity is 48 household, informal social interaction, valu-
percent, close to that reported in a Gallup ing help, and church attendance all have
poll conducted in 1988 (Wuthnow 1991:6). positive effects on formal volunteering. For
Informal helping behaviors are more com- informal helping, the variables showing sig-
mon than formal volunteering—only 16.1 nificant positive effects are being female,
percent report no helping behavior. education, functional health, informal social
Table 2. Pearson Correlation Coefficients and OLS Coefficients from the Regression of Formal Vol-
unteering and Informal Helping on Selected Independent Variables: Americans’ Changing
Lives Survey, 1986 and 1989
Volunteer Index (t2)

___________________________ Helping Index (t2)
__________________________
Correlation Regression Correlation Regression
Independent Variable Coefficient Coefficients a Coefficient Coefficients a
Volunteer index (t1) .63*** .547 [.54]*** .23*** .—

Helping index (t1) .24*** .— .47*** .289 [.36]***
Background Variables
Gender .03 –.014 [–.01] .04 * .144 [.07]***
Race –.03 –.048 [–.01] –.06*** –.065 [–.02]
Age –.09*** –.001 [–.01] –.33*** –.013 [–.20]***
Age2 –.06** –.000 [–.03] –.03 –.000 [–.09]***
Human Capital
Education (t1) .27*** .038 [.11]*** .25*** .023 [.07]***
Family income (t 1) .20*** –.001 [–.00] .20 *** .004 [.01]
Functional health (t2) .13*** .042 [.03] .22*** .062 [.04]*
Chronic illness (t2) –.05** .024 [.03] –.18*** .001 [.00]
Social Capital
Number of children .14 *** .062 [.07]*** .14*** .002 [.00]
in household (t1)
Informal social .18 *** .048 [.05]** .19*** .071 [.07]***
interaction (t1)
Cultural Capital
Values helping (t1) .10*** .046 [.03]* .06*** .076 [.06]***
Prayer (t1) .17*** .015 [.02] .01 –.028 [–.04]*
Church attendance (t 1) .28*** .059 [.10]*** .05* .036 [.06]**
Intercept –.705 .257

Adjusted R2 .426 .285
Number of cases 2,846 2,846
a Parameter estimates are followed by standardized coefficients (in brackets).
*p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests)
interaction, valuing help, and church atten- model based on matrices provided by
dance; prayer is negatively related. The nega- PRELIS. We used PRELIS to generate a ma-
tive coefficients for the age variables indicate trix of polychoric correlations and an accom-
that informal helping declines with age, and panying matrix of asymptotic variances and
the rate of decline increases as people get covariances. With these matrices as input, we
older. then estimated the models using the weighted
Figure 1 depicts our structural equation least-squares fitting function in LISREL
model. Age, gender and race are treated as VIII, which is asymptotically distribution-
exogenous variables, socioeconomic status is free (Joreskog and Sorbom 1988).
allowed to determine health and the social We first constructed measures of volun-
and cultural capital variables, and formal teering and helping by combining the volun-
volunteering and informal helping are mea- teer index with the volunteer hours measure
sured at time 2. The coefficients shown are and combining the helping index with the
the maximum-likelihood estimates of the helping hours measure. We created these
Church Volunteer index (t1) Volunteer hours (t1)
attendance Prayer
.9 5
9 .8
.59 .93
Religiosity Volunteering
construct
(t1)
–.48 .16
7
.5
Values help .07 Volunteer index (t2)
0
1.0
.08 Volunteering
–.17 .1 construct
–.23 2 (t2) .90
Black .12
–.22
.13 Volunteer hours (t2)
Number of
–.4
1
.23 children
.19 .09
.05
Female .20 .06
Helping index (t2)
.96
Social
–.2
3
interaction Helping construct
08
–. (t2) .76
–.48
Age –.50
.10
.4
Helping hours (t2)

5
–.
47 .10
Health
Helping construct
(t1)
.33 .29
.7
Socioeconomic 01
8
.97 1.
status
–.9
0
.64 .72
Helping index (t1) Helping hours (t1)
Education Income
Chronic Functional
WHO CARES? TOWARD AN INTEGRATED THEORY OF VOLUNTEER WORK
–.14 illness health
.14
Figure 1. LISREL Model of Instrumental Variables Related to Formal Volunteering and Informal Helping (Standardized Coefficients)
705
Note: All paths shown are significant at p < .05 or better.

constructs for both wave 1 and wave 2. We paths helps us understand better the causal
also used the high correlation between in- structure that underlies volunteer work.
come and education to create a latent con-
struct for socioeconomic status. We used the
high correlation between prayer and church Exogenous Factors
attendance to create a latent construct for re- Both volunteering and helping are to some
ligiosity and we used the negative correlation degree structurally determined (i.e., they are
between functional health and chronic illness influenced by statuses that are difficult to al-
to create a functional health construct. ter). Older people are less likely to engage in
Lambda coefficients for these constructs are either formal or informal volunteer work. The
shown in Figure 1.10 age effect on formal volunteering is entirely
We next fit structural equation models to indirect (Table 3), probably because of co-
the data using our theory and the preliminary hort and life-cycle effects. Older people re-
results reported in Table 2 as guides. Figure 1 ported less education and were less likely to
reports all the paths estimated that were sig- have young children in the household at the
nificant at .05 or less using a two-tailed test. time of the survey. The negative effect of age
The final model represents a modification of on helping, on the other hand, signals either
our original design in the following respects. an impaired ability to perform obligations or
Although previous research on race and for- a decline in those obligations. Older people
mal volunteering had produced mixed results, are less likely to help because they are more
our zero-order correlations suggested a nega- likely to experience health problems. Even
tive impact of being Black on volunteering. net of poor health, however, older people are
We therefore tried estimating a model in less likely to report helping behavior (Table
which a direct path from race to volunteering 3). Because this cannot be attributed to a lack
was included. The model would not converge of social contacts (informal social interaction
and therefore we fixed this path at 0. As there is unrelated to age), we could attribute this
was no zero-order correlation between gen- result to a decline in social obligations. For
der and formal volunteering, we also fixed example, older people may baby-sit less as
this path at 0. However, it was possible to fit their grandchildren reach adolescence; also
a model that included direct effects of race they may no longer have parents alive who
and gender on informal helping (see Table 3). need looking after.
We also tried fitting a model with both linear Women are more likely than men to engage
and squared versions of the age variable. in volunteer work, especially informal help-
However, the model would converge only ing. Table 3 shows no direct effect of gender
when the squared term was excluded. on formal volunteering. Although women re-
Overall, the final model fits the data very ported slightly less education than men and
well (adjusted goodness-of-fit index lived in households with less income (and for
[AGFI] = .96). An examination of specific these reasons would be less likely to volun-
teer) they were more likely to have children
10 living with them, visit and talk with friends,
We also tried to estimate models using num-
ber of children and informal social interaction as attend church and pray, and believe the good
indicators of a latent construct for social capital, life demands assisting others—all factors
but the indicator variables are weakly related and conducive to volunteering. Women take dif-
the construct would not cohere. We also esti- ferent paths to helping and volunteering. Not
mated a model in which the “value helping” item only is there a direct effect of gender on in-
was included in a three-item religiosity construct formal helping, but women are more likely to
with church attendance and prayer. While the attach value to helping others, which encour-
three item construct held together well, the struc- ages helping behavior. On the other hand,
tural equation model using it yielded a chi-square because women have low socioeconomic sta-
of 2,609.13 (d.f. = 140). We then estimated a
model separating the “value helping” measure
tus, their health is worse, and this makes it
from the religious behaviors. The second model more difficult for them to help.11
loses 4 degrees of freedom, but it is a signifi-
cantly better fit (difference in chi-squares = 11Our analyses suggest women are inhibited
771.61). from volunteering because they are more likely
Table 3. Standardized Weighted Least-Square Coefficients for the Structural Equation Model of
Formal Volunteering and Informal Helping and Selected Independent Variables: Ameri-
cans’ Changing Lives Survey, 1986 and 1989
Volunteer Construct (t2)

___________________________ Help Construct (t2)
____________________________
Direct Indirect Direct Indirect
Independent Variable Effect Effect Total Effect Effect Total
Volunteer construct (t1) .57*** .— .57*** .— .05*** .05***
Help construct (t1) .— .— .— .45*** .— .45***
Volunteer construct (t2) .— .— .— .09*** .— .09***
Background Variables
Gender .— .03*** .03*** .14*** .01 .15***
Race .— –.07*** –.07*** .00 –.06*** –.05***
Age .— –.11*** –.11*** –.14*** –.10*** –.23***
Human Capital
Socioeconomic status (t1) .29*** –.12*** .17*** .08 .01 .09*
Health (t2) –.08** .— –.08*** .10** –.01** .09**
Social Capital
Number of children .13 *** .— .13*** .01 .01*** .02
in household (t1)
Informal social .06 *** .— .06*** .01 .01*** .01
interaction (t 1)
Cultural Capital
Values helping (t1) .07*** .— .07*** .12*** .01*** .12***
Religiosity (t1) .16*** .— .16*** .02 .01*** .04
Note: Number of cases = 2,854; chi-square = 1,837.52 (d.f. = 136); goodness-of-fit index (GFI) = .97;
and adjusted goodness-of-fit index (AGFI) = .95.
*p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests)
Blacks are less likely to volunteer than are fect of race on helping behavior. Blacks at-
Whites, but the effect is entirely indirect tach less value to helping, but this is net of
(Table 3) because they have less human capi- religiosity. The model suggests that Blacks’
tal and lower rates of informal social inter- lower rate of helping is not a result of their
action than do Whites. These factors offset lower economic status and being forced to
the positive effects of religiosity and the look out for themselves. It may reflect, in-
greater likelihood that they have children liv- stead, cynicism about norms of reciprocity
ing in the household. There is no direct ef- articulated at this level of generality. In other
words, outside of the religious context,
than men to be in families with low incomes. Our
measure is family income, not respondent income. the labor force are coded in the data set as having
Women in one-adult households earn less than no personal income. Results show that respon-
men in one-adult households; husband-wife dent’s income is not related to formal volunteer-
households, by definition, produce an equal aver- ing (b = –.013, p = .136) or helping (b = –.000,
age income for men and women. When these fam- p = .969). These results seem to rule out the idea
ily types are pooled, the one-adult families pro- that volunteer work is determined by opportunity
duce the sex difference in family income. Does costs. However, the fact that men and women con-
the relationship between income and volunteering tribute differently to family income raises the pos-
hold when respondent’s income is the measure? sibility that the impact of joint income may vary
Based on the models in Table 2, we ran regres- by gender. In a second set of models, we included
sions using respondent’s income. The metric is the a cross-product interaction term between gender
same as family income; most respondents not in and family income to test for this possibility.
norms of reciprocity need to be specified terpret. At the zero-order level, chronic ill-
(i.e., who is going to benefit) before minor- ness is negatively related to volunteering and
ity groups will support them. positively related to functional health. But
neither health measure is significantly re-
lated to volunteering once controls are im-
Human Capital
posed (Table 2). The negative sign for the la-
Socioeconomic status has a strong positive tent construct in the LISREL model (Table
direct effect on formal volunteering (b = .29) 3) could be a result of our estimating the ef-
but no direct effect on helping (b = .08). We fect of health on volunteering and helping
anticipated that socioeconomic status would (themselves related) simultaneously. The im-
also have an impact on other resources pact of health status on helping is positive,
needed for volunteer work. High-status which makes more sense in light of our
people report higher rates of informal social theory. Helping and volunteering are “shar-
interaction and thus greater access to social ing” the health resource between them. It
capital than do low-status people. However, may be that healthier people volunteer less
they are no more likely to have children liv- because they help more.
ing in the household. They enjoy better
health, but health status turns out to be nega-
tively related to volunteering. The negative Social Capital
relation between socioeconomic status and Number of children and informal social in-
religiosity indicates that education and interaction are positively related to formal vol-
come have a secularizing effect that limits unteering but not to informal helping. This
access to this form of cultural capital. finding is surprising. We were concerned that
The effect of socioeconomic status on in- informal helping involves frequent contact
formal helping is negligible. Not directly re- with friends, neighbors, and relatives, thus
lated to helping, socioeconomic status is causing endogeneity problems in the analy-
positively related to health, which is posi- sis. Because informal social interaction at
tively related to helping. However, high-sta- time 1 and helping at time 1 are positively
tus people are less likely to value helping, a correlated, we expected they would be corre-
reminder that a culture of benevolence and lated across waves, even with controls im-
high social status do not necessarily go hand posed. But this is not the case. Perhaps so-
in hand. High-status people may more sub- cial interaction boosts helping only when
scribe to values of self-help or they may em- they occur simultaneously. This is suggested
phasize government solutions to problems by the fact that the zero-order correlation be-
over solutions that rely on private, voluntary tween informal social interaction at time 1
efforts. The overall effect of these cross-cut- and helping three years later is .16 compared
ting relationships is a total effect of socio- to .23 when these behaviors are measured si-
economic status that is positive but weak multaneously. Note that the model is estimat-
(Table 3). ing the effect of informal social interaction
Health status has a weak, negative effect at time 1 on any change in helping between
on formal volunteering that is difficult to in- time 1 and time 2 (because we control for
helping at time 1). It is not that informal so-
Based on the assumption that women earn less cial interaction is unrelated to helping be-
than men, we expected that the effects of family cause it is at time 1. How much people inter-
income would be greater for women since they act at time 1 does little to alter the amount of
receive the benefits from higher family income but help they give at time 2 over what they were
are less likely to suffer the higher opportunity giving, as a result of their informal social in-
costs of large personal incomes. The parameter teraction three years before.
estimates for the interaction terms (volunteering
[b = .035, p = .006] and helping [b = .031, p =
.029]) confirm that for women, volunteer work is Cultural Capital
indeed more affected by family income that it is
for men. This suggests that the opportunity costs We predicted that cultural capital would in-
and status effects of income offset each other for crease the likelihood of doing volunteer
men, but not for women. work. However, we were more confident of
the effect of religiosity on volunteering than building on research into more conventional
on helping, based on the contingent nature of labor force participation and research into
volunteer work and previous research sug- the determinants of collective action, such
gesting that variations in helping were not as social integration and “mobilizing be-
related to variations in religiosity. Results liefs” (Schervish 1995:12). Our theory is a
confirm our expectations: Religiosity is re- “supply-side” equivalent of theories that de-
lated to formal volunteering but not to help- scribe the incentives that organizations offer
ing. Just as striking, the behavioral measures to attract members (Clark and Wilson 1961).
of religiosity are more strongly related to for- Just as people bring human capital to the
mal volunteering than is a value-commitment marketplace for volunteer labor, recruiting
to volunteering. Value commitment to help- organizations offer material incentives—
ing is more strongly related to helping be- tangible rewards to individuals in return for
haviors than it is to formal volunteering, al- their contributions. Thus, people who bring
though both connections are weak. job skills (e.g., nursing) can be rewarded
with assignments drawing on those skills.
Just as people use social capital to find vol-
Formal and Informal Volunteer Work
unteer work, organizations offer solidary in-
In testing for reciprocal effects between vol- centives—interpersonal rewards of various
unteering and helping, we found that the path kinds—to obtain commitment. Because
from helping to volunteering was not signifi- most volunteers are recruited by friends,
cant and that the fit of the model improved relatives, and associates, an organization
greatly if we fixed this path at 0. The rela- can offer more opportunities for social inter-
tion between these two activities is not mu- action and community in return for unpaid
tually beneficial—an increase in volunteer- labor. Just as people exploit their cultural
ing increases helping, regardless of any ef- capital to obtain volunteer opportunities, so
fect helping has on volunteering. The reverse organizations offer purposive incentives in
is not true—helping has no impact on formal the form of symbolic and expressive
volunteering once the influence of formal “goods” that articulate the organization’s
volunteering on helping is taken into ac- values.
count. The indirect effects of the capital in- The test of our theory concerning the re-
dicators on helping shown in Table 3 indi- sources required for volunteer work enables
cate that they influence helping through their us to draw a number of conclusions:
impact on formal volunteering. First, although the origins of volunteer
work run deep in core social statuses like
age, race, and gender, the effects of these sta-
DISCUSSION
tuses on volunteer work are largely indirect.
The theory guiding our analysis is that entry Rather, they determine how much of the
into the volunteer labor force requires three capital important to volunteer work people
different kinds of capital—human, social, can accumulate. Although formal volunteer
and cultural—and that different forms of vol- work does not appear to be strongly
unteer work draw on different kinds of capi- gendered, the fact that women report helping
tal. Although the role of many of these fac- others at a higher rate than do men (net of
tors in encouraging “voluntary participation” the other factors in the model) provides
is well known (Smith 1994), ours is among strong support that nurturance and care for
the first studies to attempt to assess their others is deeply embedded in sex-role defi-
separate impacts on formal and informal vol- nitions.
unteer work simultaneously and to estimate With respect to race, lower volunteer rates
the reciprocal effects of different kinds of for Blacks compared to Whites are largely
volunteer work. accounted for by Blacks’s lower rate of so-
In conceptualizing the determinants of cial interaction, which offsets the positive ef-
volunteer work, we adopted the perspective fect of religiosity. Blacks also may volunteer
that, like other forms of work, volunteering at lower rates than Whites because they are
demands resources. We suggested a tripar- less likely to be asked (Hodgkinson 1995:
tite conceptualization of these resources, 45). These data provide little support for the
theory that “helping out” is more prevalent quired, and who the teachers and role mod-
in the Black community because of eco- els are (Staub 1995).12
nomic exigencies. Nor are Blacks more Our third conclusion is more tentative. We
likely to subscribe to norms of helping than hypothesized that formal volunteer work, be-
are Whites. Hogan et al. (1993) also report ing public, would have different roots than
less help by Blacks and speculate that “the the more private form of volunteering, help-
ability of black families to support kin in ing others. The differential effects of the so-
need may have deteriorated as a result of the cial capital variables confirm this view—so-
cumulation of economic and social disadvan- cial ties contribute to formal volunteering but
tage among a sizeable segment of the black not helping. Also as expected, different de-
population” (p. 1450). Although Blacks ex- grees of religiosity are associated with dif-
perience socioeconomic deprivations, our ferent degrees of volunteering, but they are
data fail to demonstrate a direct effect of unrelated to the amount of help provided.
these deprivations on helping behavior. Our This finding is consistent with research sum-
data indicate that Blacks, being poorer, ex- marized by Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventris
perience more illness and are less able to (1993:342). More religious people are no
provide help than are Whites. more likely to offer help than are the less re-
Second, human capital variables, which ligious. Religiosity does, however, increase
many researchers have linked to volunteer the likelihood that help will be provided
work, are connected in complex ways. The through “institutional” channels—“[R]eli-
fact that socioeconomic status is related to gious organizations tell people of opportuni-
formal volunteering but not to helping seems ties to serve, both within and beyond the con-
to rule out the possibility that high status gregation itself, and provide personal con-
people are more likely to have “internalized tacts, committees, phone numbers, meeting
abstract prescriptive norms that they should spaces, transportation, or whatever it may
help dependent others” (Latting 1990:124).
If it were so, the impact of socioeconomic 12 We cannot estimate separate models for dif-
status on volunteer work would be the same, ferent kinds of volunteering and helping because
regardless of the type of volunteer work. the number of respondents reporting any one sub-
Most probably, high socioeconomic status type is too small. Also, we cannot distribute the
people volunteer more because they have hours measure across different types of volunteer-
more verbal, writing, and social skills, which ing and helping. To investigate the possibility that
gives them more confidence to reach out to there may be at least two different spheres of for-
others—and makes them more desirable as mal volunteering, we split the formal volunteer-
ing index into church-related and non-church-re-
volunteers (Verba et al. 1995). The fact that
lated volunteering because church-related volun-
socioeconomic status has a positive direct ef- teering was more common. This yielded two
fect on formal volunteering but a negative dummy variables. One contrasts those who vol-
direct effect on religiosity—a powerful in- unteered for church-related causes (N = 756) with
ducement to volunteering—suggests that the those who did not volunteer at all (N = 1,628).
social foundation of formal volunteering is The other contrasts those who volunteered for
religious, while the social foundation of in- secular groups (N = 906) with those who did not
formal helping is secular. This finding also volunteer at all (N = 1,628). Using logistic regres-
supports our contention that the cultural “re- sion, we estimated the same model for both de-
sources” needed for volunteer work are not pendent variables—the model consisting of the
gained exclusively from educational qualifi- church attendance, frequency of prayer, value
cations. We need to take seriously the idea helping, education, and family income variables.
that other forms of cultural capital are im- The results were similar, except that prayer was
positively related to church-related volunteering
portant. For example, does it make sense to
but not related to secular volunteering. Education
think of religious training as an equivalent to had a more powerful effect in the secular model
schooling except that the symbolic goods in (odds ratio = 1.24) than in the church-related
this case involve work on behalf of others? model (odds ratio = 1.125). Surprisingly, church
More studies are needed of how people serve attendance was more strongly related to secular
apprenticeships for volunteer work, what volunteering (odds ratio = 1.915) than to religious
kind of moral and practical education is re- volunteering (odds ratio = 1.279).
take to help turn good intentions into action” public altruism fosters informal, more inter-
(Wuthnow 1994:253).13 personal, helping. This, in turn, means that
We assumed that helping, being more the social factors that boost formal volunteer-
obligatory than formal volunteering, would ing also have a positive effect on the chances
be more affected by enabling factors like age of helping others on a more informal basis.
and health. This is also true. We attribute this Perhaps volunteering is a place to make
difference not only to the more obligatory friends. These results seem to run counter to
nature of helping, but also to the more col- those of Wuthnow (1991), who argues that
lective nature of formal volunteering. In the more institutionalized forms of volunteer
structural form, formal volunteering re- work tend to drive out less institutionalized
sembles other types of collective behavior helping.
and is explained by some of the same fac-
tors. Helping, although perhaps motivated by John Wilson is Professor of Sociology at Duke
similar values and norms, is structured dif- University. His primary research focus is on vol-
ferently. A more rigorous test of the proposi- unteering and social participation, particularly in
tion that volunteering is contingent whereas connection with religion, work, family, and ideas
of citizenship. He is author of Playing by the
helping is obligatory must await data that Rules: Sport, Society and the State (Wayne State
permit the disaggregation of volunteering University Press, 1994).
into different types. This would enable us to
tie “supply” factors like capital to more spe- Marc Musick recently received his Ph.D. in soci-
ology from Duke University and is currently a
cific types of volunteer behavior. Data are
Postdoctoral Trainee in the Research Training
also needed on the demands on the individual Program on Psychosocial Factors in Mental
for help from kin and friends to better mea- Health and Illness at the University of Michigan.
sure the strength of obligations. His dissertation focuses on the relationship be-
Concerning the relation between volun- tween social support reciprocity and mental and
teering and helping, we posited a general dis- physical health among the elderly. He is also in-
position that formal volunteering would be terested in the relationships between productive
associated with and would encourage infor- activity and well-being, and between religion and
mal helping—and vice versa. This is not health. In collaboration with the Duke Explor-
atory Center for Minority Health Promotion, he
strictly true. Although there is no zero-sum
studies the impact of stress and social support on
relation between volunteering and helping, the physical and mental health of African Ameri-
the effect seems to be one way rather than can elderly.
reciprocal: Volunteering encourages helping,
but helping does not affect formal volunteer-
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694 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

John Wilson Marc Musick

We construct an integrated theory of formal and informal volunteer work

I n their “mapping of work’s diverse

694 American Sociological Review, 1997, Vol. 62 (October:694–713)

a significant predictor of hours of help to Variables

Volunteer Index (t2)

Volunteer index (t1) .63* .547 [.54]* .23*** .—

Intercept –.705 .257

Helping hours (t2)

–.14 illness health

Note: All paths shown are significant at p < .05 or better.

Volunteer Construct (t2)

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