February 7, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The share of older Americans who are volunteering has gone up since 2003, but all volunteers are giving fewer hours per month, and increasingly likely to volunteer on their own rather than solely through a charity, according to a new survey by AARP, the national membership organization for Americans age 50 and older.
As a result of this self-directed service, overall volunteerism jumped to 69 percent of respondents, compared with 62 percent in a similar study AARP completed in 2003.
The survey found that, as in the 2003 study, 51 percent of respondents age 45 and up donated their time through an organization in 2009. But 57 percent of older Americans surveyed said they volunteered on their own, compared with 34 percent in 2003.
But volunteers overall are giving less time than in the past, the survey found: respondents said they gave an average of six to 10 hours a month in 2009, compared with an average of 15 hours of month volunteers reported in the 2003 survey.
AARP’s survey of 1,475 Americans age 45 and older was conducted in August.
Church Involvement
Among the survey’s other findings in the survey:
Black Americans of the baby boom generation and older were especially likely to volunteer their time, and Hispanics least likely. Fifty-three percent of blacks surveyed reported being very involved in religious or spiritual activities (compared with 31 percent of whites and nearly 30 percent of Hispanics), and nearly twice as many African Americans as whites reported being very involved in educational activites.
Although three out of four respondents said they belong to at least one organization, the perecentages of people who claim membership in most specific kinds of groups dropped compared to a similar AARP survey in 1997. Of all groups, churches and other religious organizations showed the steepest declines in membership by respondents between 1997 and 2009, with a drop of just over 13 percent.
Charitable giving increased last year over the previous one, with 72 percent of respondents saying they had given money to charity in 2009, compared with 55 percent in 2008.
A copy of the survey, “Connecting and Giving: A Report on How Mid-Life and Older Americans Spend Their Time, Make Connections and Build Communities,” is available for free download on the AARP Web site.
