Doing Well by Doing Good: Volunteering and Occupational Achievement among American Women

Abstract

AbstractThe popular assumption that volunteer work helps people get good jobs is tested using panel data from the Young Women's Module of the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience. Volunteering while a young adult has no effect on whether women will be working for pay eighteen years later, but it has a positive effect on the occupational status of those who are. Length of time spent in the labor force between early adulthood and middle age suppresses the positive effect of volunteering on occupational status. A separate analysis of women who display more commitment to working for pay by being in the labor force in both 1973 and 1991 shows the same positive effect of volunteer work on occupational status.