Will Boomer Retirees Form a New Army of Volunteers?

Contact: Stu Kantor, (202) 261-5283, skantor@ui.urban.org

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 13, 2007—As the first phalanx of the 76 million-strong baby boom generation begins turning 62 and receiving Social Security benefits January 1, will they create a massive army of willing and able volunteers? Researchers from the Urban Institute’s Retirement Project examine this question in three new research briefs.

The vast majority of adults who volunteer while working also do so after retirement, Sheila Zedlewski shows in “Will Retiring Boomers Form a New Army of Volunteers?” What’s more, a significant share of older adults who don’t formally volunteer give it a try after retiring.

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, conducted by the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center for the National Institute on Aging, Zedlewski examines transitions from work to volunteering between 1996 and 2004 for adults age 55 to 64. Among those who retired, 45 percent engaged in formal volunteer activities at a religious, educational, health-related, or other charitable organization even though only 34 percent had volunteered while working. Individuals who consider religion important and those with spouses who volunteer were the most likely to start after retirement.

“Since the population age 55 to 64 will be about 50 percent larger by 2010 than in 2000 and 76 percent bigger by 2020, nonprofits seem destined to benefit from significant growth in the services of retirees,” says Zedlewski.

Retaining Older Volunteers

Older adults usually stick with their original decision to volunteer or not, and they are more likely to stop than to start, Barbara Butrica, Richard Johnson, and Sheila Zedlewski demonstrate in “Retaining Older Volunteers Is Key to Meeting Future Volunteer Needs.”
 
Volunteers who put in many hours over many years and who are married to volunteers tend to volunteer the longest. Nonvolunteers take the leap more often if they have been uninvolved for relatively few years and their spouses volunteer. For instance, nonvolunteers who marry a volunteer are 16 percentage points more likely than unmarried people to start volunteering.

Butrica, Johnson, and Zedlewski found that three out of five adults age 55 to 65 in 1996 formally volunteered sometime between 1996 and 2004. Nearly two out of five volunteers were steady contributors. Only one-third of nonvolunteers in 1996 had started volunteering by 2004.

“These results point to the need to focus efforts on retaining older volunteers to maximize volunteer engagement during later years,” the researchers conclude. “Recruiting older adults in volunteer activities early on, ideally before they retire, could fill any remaining gaps in volunteer needs.”

Staying Active

Despite older adults’ relatively high rates of engagement -- defined as paid work or formal volunteering --  Zedlewski and Butrica see enormous potential for recruiting more older adults into the workforce or nonprofit volunteer forces. In “Are We Taking Full Advantage of Older Adults’ Potential?” they estimate that over 10 million healthy older adults with no caregiving responsibilities neither worked nor volunteered formally in 2004.

Over half of these seniors are under age 75, and nine out of ten have prior work experience. Current shortages in volunteers and expected shortfalls in workers, they say, should provide ample incentive for employers and nonprofits to harness this potential talent.

While the supply of work and volunteer opportunities bodes well for older boomers, Zedlewski and Butrica warn that help will be needed to encourage engagement among those with limited education and work experience. Compared with higher-income older adults, significantly smaller shares of low-income individuals worked (15 percent versus 46 percent) or volunteered formally (23 percent compared with 37 percent). New policies could include training, more federal funding for programs that target low-income older adults, and broader networks that connect older adults to volunteer opportunities.

The upside of longer work lives, the researchers point out, includes increased retirement incomes, greater tax revenues, and reduced net Social Security payouts. The payback from increased volunteerism includes enhanced health status, potential reductions in the cost of government health programs, and benefits to those receiving services.

Reading the Reports

The three briefs were released by the Urban Institute’s Retirement Project, a team of experts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, tax and budget policy, and microsimulation modeling that assesses how retirement policies, demographic trends, and private-sector practices influence older Americans’ security and decisionmaking. The “Perspectives on Productive Aging” series is made possible by a grant from Atlantic Philanthropies’s Ageing Programme.

“Will Retiring Boomers Form a New Army of Volunteers?” is available at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411579. “Retaining Older Volunteers Is Key to Meeting Future Volunteer Needs” can be found at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411580. “Are We Taking Full Advantage of Older Adults’ Potential?” can be read at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411581.

Posted with these research briefs was the discussion paper “Volunteer Transitions among Older Americans,” by Barbara Butrica, Richard Johnson, and Sheila  Zedlewski. It can be accessed at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411582.

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