Doing good, feeling good: causal evidence from volunteers

Abstract

Volunteers are reputedly healthier and happier than their non-volunteering counterparts. But is this a causal link or are healthier, happy individuals simply more likely to volunteer? Some papers have attempted to identify the causal relationship using an instrumental variable methodology, mostly relying on measures of religiosity as instruments for volunteering – however, religiosity may also affect health thus calling into question the validity of this approach. We rely on a novel instrument, a measure physical proximity to volunteer opportunities, to help identify the causal link from volunteering to health and happiness using econometric regression techniques. We find that volunteering is a robustly significant predictor of health, and positively affects life satisfaction for all but those aged under 35.

KEYWORDS:

• Volunteering and happiness
• volunteering and health
• access to charities
• conditional mixed process
• causality

Acknowledgements

This paper extends Chapter 3 of Forough Seifi’s PhD thesis. The analysis presented in this paper was conducted at the COOL RDC which is part of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN). The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent the CRDCN’s or that of its partners. We thank Abigail Payne at McMaster University for giving us access to the T3010 data through the PEDAL data laboratory. We are grateful for comments made by participants of the 2017 and 2019 Canadian Economic Association meetings especially those of Ida Ferrara and Barry Watson; useful suggestions were made by participants of the interdisciplinary health economics seminar at McMaster University in May 2019 and at the ERNOP 2019 conference in Basel, July 2019. We thank Pierre Brochu, Calum Carmichael, Louis-Philippe Morin, and Casey Warman for their careful comments on an earlier version. Three astute referees provided feedback that greatly improved this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We had to use 2012 charities data with the 2013 GSS survey because of lack of access to research-ready data. As a robustness check, we also used one-year lagged charities data with every GSS survey and it made no difference.

2 On a per capita basis while Saskatchewan (5 per 1000), Prince Edward Island (4 per 1000) and Manitoba (4 per 1000) lead the country, Quebec (2 per 1000) and Newfoundland (2 per 1000) have the fewest number of charities per capita.

3 Data on population size at the postal code level are not available; we estimate this population by using the geographic attribute files from the 2006 and 2011 censuses which contain population data at the dissemination block level, the lowest geographic level after the postal code level. Then, in order to find out how many postal codes are attributed to each dissemination block, we merge the geographic attribute files with the postal code conversion file (PCCF). We divide the population size at the dissemination block by the total number of postal codes that each dissemination block encompasses, which effectively assumes that the population is distributed evenly across postal codes. Using, again, the PCCF to find the corresponding coordinates (longitude and latitude) of each postal code, we construct a 3km circle around each postal code and then sum the population that falls within this band.

4 Three kilometers was chosen because that is about the limit of walking distance (30 min or so).

5 Specifically, the GSS (2003, 2008 and 2013) asks: ‘in the past 12 month, were you a member or participant in: a union or professional association; … a political party or group; … a sports or recreational organization (such as a hockey league, health club, or golf club); … cultural/ educational group (such as a theatre group, book club or bridge club); … a religious-affiliated group (such as church youth group or choir); … a school group, neighbourhood, civic or community association (such as PTA, alumni, block parents or neighbourhood watch); … service club (such as Kiwanis, Knights of Columbus or the legion); … other'.

6 We thank an astute referee for raising this point.

Additional information

Funding

The services and activities provided by the COOL RDC are made possible by the financial or in-kind support of the SSHRC – Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the CIHR – Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the CFI – Canada Foundation for Innovation, Statistics Canada, Carleton University, the University of Ottawa and the Université du Québec en Outaouais. R. A. Devlin acknowledges with gratitude funding from SSHRC [grant number 435-2-12-0489].

Notes on contributors

Catherine Deri Armstrong

Catherine Deri Armstrong is an associate professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, where she is currently chair of the department.

Rose Anne Devlin

Rose Anne Devlin is a professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa.

Forough Seifi

Forough Seifi did her PhD in the department of Economics, University of Ottawa.