Centre for Policy on Ageing



Volunteering in the post-retirement years
Author(s)	Jeni Warburton
Corporate Author	Social Policy Research Centre - SPRC, University of New South Wales
Journal title	SPRC Reports and Proceedings, no 136, November 1997
Pages	pp 165-175
Keywords	Voluntary work [elderly] ; Retirement ; Social surveys ; Australia.
Annotation	This paper is based on preliminary results of a survey of older people living in Brisbane in 1996, the aim of which was to investigate their decision-making processes, specifically the factors which differentiate those who volunteer for an organisation from those who do not. Results indicate that people volunteer for both altruistic and egotistic reasons, based in part on an assessment of the costs and benefits of volunteering, with volunteers more likely to see the benefits of volunteering and less likely to consider the costs. However, deciding to volunteer involves complex decision-making processes, and it may be simplistic to assume that as most older people are outside paid work, they can be viewed as a `rich resource' for volunteer organisations. This paper was presented at Australia's Fifth National Social Policy Conference, held in Sydney in 1997, which had the theme, `States, markets, communities: remapping the boundaries'. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-980818210 A
Classmark	GHH: G3: 3F: 7YA
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.