The Investigator #5: Volunteering by State, 2005 Update

The information below serves as a supplement to the 5th issue of The Investigator: Volunteering By State, 2005 Update.

Source of Data for Volunteering By State: 2005 Update

This issue of the Investigator is a follow-up to the 2nd issue, which provided information on volunteerism based on the Current Population Survey for 2002-2004.

What is the Current Population Survey?
The Current Population Survey is a monthly nationally representative sample of households conducted for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Each month the Bureau of the Census interviews 60,000 households which represent roughly 150,000 individuals. These households are interviewed for four consecutive months and then for four consecutive months a year later. In addition to the core set of questions, in some months supplemental questions are also asked. Since 2002, every September questionnaire has included questions about volunteering. The September Supplement, like some of the other Supplements, depend on annual funding allocations and may be not be included in any given year. For BLS press releases that report the volunteering rate for various years and for the source of the national statistics presented in this issue, see http://www.bls.gov/schedule/archives/all_nr.htm#VOLUN.

Maps

In this issue of The Investigator, we use maps to display some of the data we collected from the CPS. The list below includes both the maps on the publication as well as two additional ones.

Each color on the map is used to represent approximately 6 states. Therefore, a change in color does not necessarily represent a large change in volunteering rates between states. For example, in Map B, the volunteering rate difference between South Dakota and Iowa is less than 1 percentage point, but the difference between Nebraska (the same color as South Dakota) and Iowa is about 4 percentage points. The changes in color do show the dispersion of volunteering rates throughout the nation.

Tables

Along with the maps, we are also providing tables that display volunteerism and voting data for all of the states. We hope these data will help to further promote volunteerism in your state.

Volunteer Growth and Population Growth

A quick overview of the volunteer data that we are displaying in Map A and Map B shows that volunteering rates in the United States have generally been increasing over the past two to three years. This indicates that the numbers of volunteers are also increasing. In 2002 the number of volunteers was 59.8 million people over the age of 15 and not institutionalized (throughout the publication, we refer to the population as those over the age of 15 and not institutionalized. As defined by the BLS, institutionalized persons are inmates of penal and mental institutions, sanitariums, and homes for the aged, infirm and needy. This is the defined population in the CPS). This figure represents a 27.4 percent volunteering rate among the US population. In 2005, a rise in the volunteering rate to 28.8 percent and natural population growth pushed the number of volunteers to 65.4 million people.

Our project for the number of volunteers in 2010: 69.6 million people
We can estimate how many more volunteers there will be in 2010 due only to population growth. Using the 2005 volunteering rate and the population growth rate between 2005 and 2010, we project that the increase in the number of volunteers due to the increase in population will be about 4 million people for a total of 69.57 million volunteers. This change is due solely to an increase in population regardless of any new policies that may be implemented to increase volunteering rates. In other words, any projected goals for increasing national volunteer numbers should factor in the 4 million people who will be added to the volunteer pool simply from population growth.

How did we calculate this?
The statistics used in this issue of The Investigator are the authors’ calculations using the Current Population Survey. These data are publicly available and may be found at http://www.bls.gov/cps/. See The Investigator, Volume I, Issue 1, “Data Sets on Volunteerism: A Research Primer,” for more information on accessing this and other volunteerism data sets.

We first calculated how much of the rise in volunteerism between 2002 and 2005 was due to population growth versus the increase in volunteering by holding the volunteering rate constant between 2002 and 2005. This calculation renders 62.8 million volunteers in 2005, which leaves 2.5 million volunteers unaccounted for in the aforementioned total of 65.4 million volunteers. We suggest that population growth explains these additional 2.5 million volunteers whereas rising volunteering rates account for the other 3.1 million volunteers. Based on this calculation, we recommend that targets for future volunteer engagement take into account that roughly half of the increase in volunteers will be from population growth.

For the 2010 projections, we assessed population growth based on the Bureau of Labor Studies and CPS data, which puts the population of the U.S. in 2002 at 218.186 million people and in 2005 at 226.934 million people. This indicates that population growth was about 2.916 million persons a year. Using this rate of growth, we estimate that the size of the population in 2010 will be about 241.514 million people. If the volunteering rate is held constant at 28.8 percent, then the number of volunteers will be 69.556 million volunteers or roughly 4 million more volunteer than in 2005. This increase is due solely to an increase in population regardless of any new policies that may be implemented to increase volunteering rates. In other words, any projected goals for increasing national volunteer numbers should factor in the 4 million people who will be added to the volunteer pool simply due to population growth.

Volunteering Rates
Across the United States as shown in Map A, there is a wide range of volunteering rates between states. Overall the 2005 national volunteering rate was 31 percent. This is a five percent increase from the 2002 national volunteering rate. Over this same time period, Utah consistently had the highest percentage of volunteers at 46 percent. Minnesota, Nebraska, Vermont, and South Dakota are also among the top five states with the highest levels of volunteering. Except for Vermont, all of these states are located in the central region of the United States and are relatively large, geographically. A more in-depth analysis of this data would likely reveal other factors that affect the high levels of volunteer engagement in these states.

Changes in Volunteering Rates between 2002 and 2005

What is the difference between percentage point and percent change?
In Table 1, we report the volunteering rates for each state in the years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. To reveal the changes in these rates over the last four years, we calculated the percentage point change and the percent change. Percent change represents the level at which the proportion of a state’s population who volunteered in 2005 has changed since the 2002 rate. Map B shows the percent change in volunteering rates by state. Percentage point change, on the other hand, is the difference between the rate in 2005 and in 2002. Map C shows the percentage point change in volunteering rates for each state.

To better understand the difference between these two calculations we can use California’s volunteering rate as an example. The volunteering rate for California increased from 24.91 percent in 2002 to 26.65 percent in 2005. This represents a 1.74 percentage point increase (26.75 - 24.91) but only a 7 percent increase [(26.75 - 24.91) / 24.91]. Or, suppose two states have a 1 percentage point increase, but that one had an original volunteering rate of 10 percent and the other had a volunteer rate of 50 percent. Then the former state would have a 10 percent increase in the volunteering rate and the latter state would have a 2 percent increase in the volunteering rate. In Table 1, we can see the difference in the rates changes generated by percentage point change and percent change. Throughout this issue of The Investigator, we report on percent changes rather than percentage point changes because we feel that this figure does a better job at indicating the significance of the change in volunteering rate within each state.

Volunteers and Voting

In Table 2, we present the complete state-level data set on the participation of volunteers in voting as compared to the general population’s voting rates. The general population does not exclude those people who also said that they vote. Therefore, we present this data primarily to demonstrate the connection between volunteering and voting. We encourage further research to analyze the level at which these two variables are correlated.