|
 eniors
who spend less than an hour a week volunteering are helping themselves
as well as others, according to a new University of Michigan
study. The study, to be published in the Journal of Gerontology:
Social Sciences, documents the link between moderate levels
of volunteer activity and increased chances of survival.
 "Quite
a few people assume that older volunteers should benefit in terms
of better health and well-being," says Marc A. Musick, a
research fellow at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR)
and first author of the study. "This study is one of the
first to document that's true in a nationally representative
sample of older Americans."
It's
also among the first to establish that people live longer because
they volunteer, rather than that people volunteer because they're
healthier and hence more likely to live longer. For the study,
Musick and coauthors A. Regula Herzog and James S. House, both
senior researchers at the ISR, analyzed data on 1,211 older adults.
The researchers collected information through face-to-face interviews,
following respondents over seven-and-a-half years, from 1986
to 1994.
During
the first interview, respondents were asked whether they had
volunteered in the past year for one or more groups and, if so,
about how much time they had spent volunteering.
About
35 percent of the sample reported doing some volunteer work in
the past year a proportion similar to that found in other national
studies of seniors. Those who said they had volunteered were
also asked about how much time they had spent volunteering, with
categories ranging from less than 20 hours a year up to 160 hours
or more.
The
researchers also obtained information on a wide range of variables
related to longevity, including health conditions, physical activity,
education, income, marital status, and social activity.
After
controlling for these and other factors, the researchers found
that respondents who volunteered for a total of less than 40
hours over the past year were less likely to die over the next
seven-and-a-half years than those who didn't volunteer at all.
Volunteering for a greater number of hours did not reduce the
likelihood of death, and even tended to increase it.
"This
finding is consonant with the role-strain hypothesis," says
Musick. "For older adults, taking on too much volunteer
activity may incur just enough detriments to offset the potential
beneficial effects of volunteering."
Musick
and colleagues also found that the protective effects of volunteering
were strongest among older men and women who had low levels of
social interaction, seldom seeing or talking to anyone other
than their spouses or the person with whom they lived.
More
research is needed, according to Musick, to identify with greater
precision the factors responsible for creating the protective
effects of volunteering. One possibility is that volunteering
provides meaning and purpose in people's lives. Such qualities
may in turn have protective effects on mortality and other health
outcomes.
The
research was funded by grants from the National Institute on
Aging, National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, and the Michigan Exploratory Center for the Demography
of Aging. 
|
umich.edu,