Research on volunteering in later life has been limited. The question of whether and why older people are involved in voluntary work deserves further research. Moreover, there has been relatively little analysis on the relation to context. Information on obstacles like the influence of different sources of vulnerability and environmental factors or thresholds remains under-researched and poorly understood. Understanding the barriers that people face in deciding to volunteer could help reverse this trend. The main purpose is to investigate what key factors determine voluntary work among older people. In particular, the research looks at the relationship with the subjective neighbourhood integration of older adults and whether they volunteer or not.

We shall use data from the Belgian Ageing Studies, a sample of 59,977 Belgian senior citizens (aged sixty and above), living in 127 municipalities and cities in Belgium. A multinomial logistic regression is applied to analyse the key factors that determine whether one is a volunteer or not.

Volunteering provides opportunities for maintaining a productive role in society

The regression analysis indicates that volunteers are more likely to feel involved in their neighbourhood and to leave their home during the evening, demonstrating the importance of the contextual and social dimension of volunteering. Many older people spend a large amount of time in their neighbourhood, maintaining social contacts there and feeling connected to their area of residence (Buffel et al., 2008). The long-standing commitment of many older adults to volunteering and to their neighbourhood partly reflects a need to maintain a sense of identity and a role in the community. Through volunteer activities, older adults are not only able to preserve important social contacts; volunteering also provides opportunities for maintaining a productive role in society. Thus, old age must be acknowledged as a potential period of active (re-)engagement (Westerhof & Tulle, 2007).

Despite negative ageist views and in line with the active ageing policy of WHO (2002), older adults have a prosperous capacity to occupy a fundamental role. Policy makers and volunteer organisations should develop a more diverse way of looking at ageing and they need to recognise that older volunteers remain productive and continue to contribute to society. Moreover, local policy makers, practitioners and organisations must be made well aware of the strengths and experiences older adults possess. Theoretical and empirical work points towards the need for policy makers and volunteering programmes, not only to target older people, but also their areas of residence (Macintyre and Ellaway, 1999, 2003). It might be argued that there is still a great potential for developing volunteer activities and actions at the local level (Tarozzi, 2007). Area-level interventions must be incorporated in projects with the purpose of enhancing volunteering among older adults. When implementing projects at the local level, not only could more older adults be recruited as volunteers; in addition, an improvement of integration as well as involvement and contacts could occur.

No unequivocal relationship

A key finding is that there is no unequivocal relationship between ‘volunteering’ and ‘the social dimension of the neighbourhood’, suggesting that seniors who volunteer must be considered from a broader framework, as it is not only socio-demographic features and individual resources that have an influence on whether older adults volunteer or not. This study suggests that the social dimension of the neighbourhood is also associated with volunteer activities, although the direction of this relationship could not be determined. Importantly, volunteering among older adults accounted for diversity in the social dimension of neighbourhood features. This suggests that the relationship is worthy of further exploration.

This article contains excerpts and is adapted from Dury, S., Verté, D., Buffel, T., De Donder, L. & De Witte, N. 2010. Assessing voluntary work in later life: findings from the Belgian Ageing Studies. Presented at International Society for Third-sector Research Conference in Istanbul, Turkey on 9th July 2010.