Abstract
In this paper we present empirical results that show that detailed occupations have distinctive patterns of association with voluntary participation. We draw upon data from four secondary survey datasets from the UK (coverage 1972-2012). Occupations are shown to link to volunteering in a wide range of scenarios and in individual, household, and longitudinal contexts. We argue that these linkages provide insight into social inequalities in volunteering, and that they can help us to understand the relative influence of "circumstance" and "habits" in enabling or inhibiting voluntary participation.
Highlights
Volunteering is an important component of the social fabric of contemporary wealthy countries
We have shown that detailed occupations have some empirical connection to voluntary participation, but can this relationship be leveraged to gain more useful insights? By adding parameters for detailed occupational variations, one possibility is that the other coefficients in statistical models predicting volunteering might change in a consequential way
Even though the overall empirical association between volunteering and occupations is modest rather than strong, we have found that standard secondary survey datasets are sufficiently powerful as to allow us to identify important social groups that have distinctively above- or below-average patterns in voluntary engagement, net of a range of standard individual controls
Summary
Paine, & Howlett, 2010, p. 21, referring to the UK Citizenship Survey definition)—is more often undertaken by those with higher levels of education and those in more favorable socio-economic circumstances; by the younger and older rather than mid-aged; by women rather than by men; by host-country nationals rather than immigrants or ethnic minorities; and by those not living with disabilities (e.g., Alesina & La Ferrara, 2000; Dean, 2016; Lindsey & Mohan, 2018; Musick & Wilson, 2008; Rochester et al, 2010, c4; Shandra, 2017; Valentova & Alieva, 2018; Voicu & Serban, 2012; Wilson, 2000; Wilson & Musick, 1997). Occupations link to numerous important inequalities of experience that may influence volunteering These include, but are not necessarily limited to, inequalities in socio-economic advantage; educational and training background; flexibility and autonomy in working activities and time use; circumstances of security or precarity; social networks and social capital; volume of and control over leisure time; demographic circumstances; and even systematic patterns in health and well-being (e.g., Oesch, 2013; Rose & Harrison, 2010). In principle, such factors could be directly measured in a social survey instrument, and their influence disentangled from others. Extracts from the BHPS, UKHLS, and Home Office Citizenship Survey (HOCS, see Home Office, 2006) have been used in previous studies of patterns of voluntary participation
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