Work and Volunteering: The Long Arm of the Job

The impact of work on social life is a major concern of sociologists. Marx and Durkheim both believed that jobs have consequences for workers' lives outside the workplace, and subsequent research by Kohn, Wilensky, and others confirms that complex and self-directed jobs encourage social participation. We use this “spillover” theory to predict volunteering among respondents to the Americans' Changing Lives survey (1986–89). Occupational self-direction increases volunteering, especially among the better educated, a result of the civic skills provided. Net of self-direction, situs and occupational differences in volunteering are also found. Public sector workers volunteer the most. Within each sector, higher-status occupations volunteer more. The results suggest that, if priority is to be given to maintaining a volunteer labor pool, it would be unwise to ignore social trends limiting occupational self-direction at work or reducing the size of the public sector.