Centre for Policy on Ageing



Volunteerism and socioemotional selectivity in later life
Author(s)	Jon Hendricks, Stephen J Cutler
Journal title	Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 59B, no 5, September 2004
Pages	pp S251-S257
Source	http://www.geron.org
Keywords	Voluntary work [elderly] ; Personal relationships ; Social surveys ; United States of America.
Annotation	Should the levels of activity and engagement of middle age be maintained or relinquished in old age? This work aims to assess the applicability of socio-emotional selectivity theory in the realm of volunteerism by analysing items drawn from the Volunteer Supplement of the September 2002 US Current Population Survey (CPS). Total number of organisations volunteered for and total number of hours engaged in volunteer activities were used to obtain measures of volunteer hours per organisation and volunteer hours in the main organisations to determine whether a selective process could be observed. Descriptive statistics of age patterns were followed by a series of curve estimations to identify the best fitting curves. Logistic age patterns of slowly increasing then relatively stable volunteer activity suggest that socio-emotional selectivity processes are operative in the realm of voluntary activities. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-060126001 A
Classmark	GHH: DS: 3F: 7T
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.