Modelling Decisions to Volunteer at a Household Level

Abstract

Volunteering is widespread in Australia and within households it is common to observe couples making similar decisions on whether to volunteer or not. Using a sample from the HILDA survey our models of interactions between couples indicate that the positive correlation between the decisions of partners can be attributed to a large endogenous effect of volunteering. In addition, it is found that volunteers are generally more educated, have children, are aged around 50 and attend religious services. The models used can be broadly classified as assuming cooperative and non-cooperative behaviour within couples and are based on equilibrium concepts from game theory.