Volunteering and Self-Rated Health in Urban China: New Evidence from Analyses of Treatment-Effects Models
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Volunteering and Self-Rated Health in Urban China: New Evidence from Analyses of Treatment-Effects Models Zhongsheng Wu 1
& Angela
Bies 1
Received: 25 September 2019 / Accepted: 16 September 2020/ # The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) and Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract While 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 nonWestern 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 quasiexperimental design and adopted two treatment effects models - propensity score matching and nearest neighbor matching - to detect the net effect of volunteering 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 effect 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 selfselection 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. Keywords Volunteering . Self-rated health . Self-selection bias . Treatment-effects . China
* Zhongsheng Wu [email protected]
1
School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, College Park, 2101 Van Munching Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Z. Wu, A. Bies
Introduction The consequences of volunteering have drawn increasing attention from scholars in multiple social science disciplines. Among the consequences, the health benefit of volunteering seems to be one of the most attractive topics that has been explored extensively (Wilson 2012). Many previous studies have revealed a positive relationship between volunteering and health. However, most of them are based on data in the Western context and their inferences haven’t accounted for the issue of self-selection bias. First of all, most previous studies in the West found similar results and concluded that individuals who participate in volunteering are likely to be healthier compared to non-volunteers. However, most of the findings are based on correlation between the volunteering and health. Although a few studies tried to detect the causal relationship by using longitudinal datasets and methods, they did not really solve the problem of self-selection bias. The positive effect of volunteering on health might be caused by self
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