August 9, 2001 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Americans are less likely to volunteer today than in years past, in part because the disparity in incomes has grown and because so many women now hold full-time jobs, according to a new study.
Economists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University have estimated that people ages 25 to 54 were 5 percent less likely to be volunteers in 1989 than were people in that age group in 1974.
The study examined a wide range of the ties that bind a society together — or so-called social capital — including volunteering. These connections benefit the economy and stimulate the sharing of ideas and values, the study said.
The study’s results support findings by Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard University, and others who say that social capital has declined in America in recent years (The Chronicle, March 8). But while Mr. Putnam’s research has attributed the decline to such things as increased television viewership and an aging population, this study identified other key causes.
The nation’s rising income disparity is primarily to blame for the lack of volunteering, said Dora L. Costa, an M.I.T. economist who along with Matthew E. Kahn of Tufts led the study. People are more likely to help others who have incomes similar to their own, but as income gaps increase they can find fewer people they feel comfortable helping. What’s more, the researchers say, people feel less inclined to reach out to others because the income disparity makes them feel alienated from society. Income inequality also contributed to fewer Americans joining membership organizations, such as churches and youth clubs, since the early 1970’s, she said.
To a lesser degree, the rise in the number of working women has played a role in the decline in volunteering because women are more likely to volunteer than men, but now have less time to do so, said the researchers. The increase has hurt other forms of social capital even more, particularly through a decline in dinner parties and other forms of entertaining.
The report, “Understanding the Decline in Social Capital, 1952-1998,” is available online at http://web.mit.edu/costa/www/papers.html.
