Volunteering and Self-Rated Health in Urban China: New Evidence from Analyses of Treatment-Effects Models

AbstractWhile most previous studies in the Western context have found a positive correlation between volunteering and health, this positive relation is not conclusive since the self-selection bias inherent in this question has not been addressed well. Meanwhile, this relation has been rarely explored in non-Western countries, especially mainland China, where institutionalized volunteer practices are more emergent. Using a nationally representative sample (N = 4967) from the 2013 Survey on Philanthropic Behaviors of Urban Citizens in China, this study followed the counterfactual framework under quasi-experimental design and adopted two treatment effects models - propensity score matching and nearest neighbor matching - to detect the net effect of v olunteering on individuals’ self-rated health. Analyses from both matching models consistently indicate that after conditioning on the covariates, volunteers on average, have a higher self-rated health score than non-volunteers. The results also provide evidence of upward bias about the positive e ffect of volunteering on health in models that use standard multiple regression approach. In sum, the findings demonstrate that volunteering is a real benefit for health, but the positive effect is likely to be overestimated when self-selection bias is not accounted for. Finally, this study presents new evidence that the positive effect of volunteering is consistent across national boundaries to the Chinese context.
Source: Applied Research in Quality of Life - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research