Americans Cut Back on Volunteerism as Job Losses Rise, Study Finds
By Caroline Preston
Contributor
September 17, 2009 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Seventy-two percent of Americans say that in the past year they have cut back on the time they spend volunteering and performing other civic activities, according to a study by the National Conference on Citizenship.
The annual America’s Civic Health Index, based on surveys of 3,889 people in May, said Americans believed their peers were doing the same.
Sixty-six percent of those surveyed said that, as a result of the recession, Americans were more concerned with looking out for themselves. Only 19 percent said people were doing more to help others.
Focusing on Family
The findings amounted to what the report’s authors called “a civic depression.”
“People have pulled back significantly over the past year,” said David B. Smith, executive director of the National Conference on Citizenship, a Congressionally chartered group that tracks and promotes involvement in community causes.
The report’s findings seem contrary to those in a study released in July by the Corporation for National and Community Service, which showed that roughly a million more people volunteered in 2008 than in the previous year.
Mr. Smith said that the drop-off in volunteerism has taken place since the corporation completed its research last fall.
Historically, recessions have prompted an increase in volunteering, Mr. Smith said, but only to the point at which unemployment tops 9 percent.
“When you hit a threshold of 9 or 10 percent,” he said, “all of a sudden people move from saying ‘This is the time to rise up and help my community,’ to ‘Times are really tough and I need to focus on making sure my family has what it needs to get through this hard time.”’
His group’s study found that people were doing more informal, local volunteer activities during the recession.
Fifty percent of Americans said they gave food or money to help someone who was not a family member; 43 percent gave food or money to a relative; and 11 percent allowed someone outside their family to stay in their home or on their property.
Role of Community
Religion, friends, and social networks seem to play a significant role in people’s interest in volunteering, said the report.
Forty percent of people who described themselves as frequent participants in religious services said they had increased their local involvement in the past year. People who said they were very active socially were also more engaged in civic life.
Online activism played a role: People between the ages of 15 and 24 who said they used online social networks to promote civic causes were more likely than their peers to get involved in their cities and towns.
The study found that volunteerism was highest among younger people. Forty-three percent of people between the ages of 15 and 44 said they volunteered locally in the last year, while 35 percent of people aged 45 to 64 did so, and 42 percent of people over 65.
The study is available on the National Conference on Citizenship’s Web site at http://ncoc.net.
Volunteering Trends in the Recession
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Activities Americans are willing to pursue
How income level affects volunteering decisions
Jobs people say help society most
SOURCE: America’s Civic Health Index
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