Abstract
Healthier aging implies lower health service expenditure and the possibility for individuals to make a longer and more valuable contribution to society. Lifestyles, including volunteering, affect our health. The policy implications of the present study are that it aims to broaden the state of knowledge and be useful to public decision-makers: if voluntary activities enhance the integration of older people into society, their participation will help to generate economic resources and improve their own welfare; if, however, health and participation do not show positive synergies, then policymakers must act independently in each of these fields. In this work, we focus on the societies of Chile, Mexico, and Spain because they have significantly aging populations and share common traits but also exhibit important differences. The empirical study employs micro-data from the World Value Survey (1994–1998, 2005–2009, and 2010–2014) and macro-data from the statistics of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). Micro- and macro-data are merged by national and temporal identifiers. Our main results provide empirical evidence that volunteering might improve every indicator of wellbeing except happiness. Different kinds of activities have different impacts on individual wellbeing. For example, volunteering in activities related to social awareness is positive for male life satisfaction, whereas volunteering in activities related to religious issues is positive for male life satisfaction but also female happiness. In general, voluntary activities have a stronger impact on male wellbeing than female wellbeing.
Highlights
One of our major public health challenges is to achieve healthy aging: if the necessary measures are not taken, the reversal of the population pyramid will have a huge impact on the economic, social development, and healthcare systems (WHO, 2012)
This section is devoted to the determinants of three indicators of wellbeing
When controlled for socioeconomic determinants, Spaniards are more likely to have a good state of health than Mexicans or Chileans; Mexicans are more likely to be happy than Spaniards
Summary
One of our major public health challenges is to achieve healthy aging: if the necessary measures are not taken, the reversal of the population pyramid will have a huge impact on the economic, social development, and healthcare systems (WHO, 2012). Lifestyles that include physical inactivity, a high-fat diet, or tobacco and alcohol consumption have frequently been studied by the scientific community as behaviors that influence the state of health in older adults (Vagetti et al, 2015). It seems that retired and senior volunteers are more protected from the hazards of retirement, physical decline, and inactivity than people of the same age who do not perform volunteer work (Fischer and Schaffer, 1993; Wilson and Musick, 1999). While the positive correlation between volunteering and wellbeing is widely documented, there are many unanswered questions concerning omitted variables, bias, selfselection, and reverse causality (Stukas et al, 2016)
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