گذشته های این اواخر : نقش تعدیل آموزش و پرورش و شغل پیشین برای کارهای داوطلبانه مردان پس از بازنشستگی

This study uses nationally representative cross-sectional data to investigate the relationship between retirement and volunteering among men aged 50–70 in the Netherlands, and how this relationship is influenced by educational and occupational background. Based on a life-course perspective, it is hypothesized that education, socio-economic status related to the occupation and non-manual occupations will moderate the relation between retirement and volunteering activities for several reasons. Results from tobit regressions indicate that retirees, the highly educated, people with high occupational status and former non-manual workers are more involved in volunteering. While no interaction between retirement and educational level is found, the characteristics of the occupation (socio-economic status and non-manual versus manual work) are indeed found to interact with retirement, leading to higher volunteering rates for male retirees from occupations with high status, and retirees from non-manual occupations. Implications, strengths and limitations of the study are discussed.

The group of retirees is steadily growing across Western countries. A suggestion has been to optimally exploit the large potential of this group by promoting civic engagement among senior citizens, especially retirees (Morrow-Howell, 2010 and Warburton et al., 2007). Some have even stated that this group could ‘save civil society’ by engaging in productive communal activities such as formal volunteering (Freedman, 1997). The idea is that society benefits from the vast resources that retirees have, while they themselves can profit from the non-monetary advantages that volunteer work has to offer. For these reasons, knowledge about how retirement affects volunteering activities, and, more specifically, which retirees decide to volunteer and which do not is important. While previous research has recurrently shown that, in general, retirement positively influences volunteering (Chambré, 1984, Choi, 2003, Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006, Hank and Erlinghagen, 2009, Mutchler et al., 2003, Principi et al., 2012 and Van den Bogaard et al., 2014), there are good reasons to suspect that this effect differs for people from various backgrounds. In social stratification research, the question whether is it mostly human capital or rather class that is at work as a differentiating factor in society has been debated extensively. It has been argued that cultural resources, like cognitive skills and knowledge, have become dominant over traditional class hierarchies for explaining differences between people (Bell, 1976, Bourdieu, 1984, Brint, 1984, Gouldner, 1979 and Pakulski and Waters, 1996). The relative importance of education over occupation has also been attested empirically, mostly for values and attitudes (Davis, 1982, Kalmijn and Kraaykamp, 2007, Svallfors, 2005 and Van de Werfhorst and De Graaf, 2004). On the other hand, there are those who maintain that the class position of a person, usually measured by their occupation, remains the principal component (Evans, 1993, Goldthorpe and Marshall, 1992 and Hout et al., 1993). This study is among the first to recognize the influence of retirees’ educational and occupational heterogeneity on their volunteering and investigate which one of these is most influential. Earlier studies have shown that education (McPherson and Rotolo, 1996 and Wilson, 2000) and other stratification variables such as class and job status (Brady et al., 1995, Gerstel and Gallagher, 1994, Smith, 1994 and Wilson and Musick, 1997b) are important predictors for volunteering. That is, on average, those with more education and higher status tend to do more volunteering. To the knowledge of the authors, this has not been coupled with the finding noted earlier that retirement prompts (more) volunteering. A question that thus remains is how the social position and human capital of people during their working life shapes their volunteering activities after retirement. This study adds to the literature by offering insight into how men's retirement affects their volunteering, and how this relationship is influenced by educational level and occupational background. Educational and occupational characteristics have been attested to be highly influential for retirement outcomes other than volunteering, such as well-being. For example, Quick and Moen (1998) showed that various occupational status groups (e.g., professional, sales-clerical) differ in their levels of satisfaction with retirement. In a similar vein, Van Solinge and Henkens (2008) found that people who experience their job as challenging are less satisfied with their retirement and adjust less well to it – indicative of them ‘missing’ their job and the accompanying experiences. This can be related to the finding that well-being in retirement is also dependent on educational background and the ‘need for cognition’: when putting their human capital to use some people require more variety and complexity in their experiences than others to be happy ( Bye & Pushkar, 2009). Regarding post-retirement activities, surprisingly little is known about how the different backgrounds of retirees influence retirement outcomes. Wang, Zhan, Liu, and Shultz (2008) showed that one such activity, bridge employment, is more prevalent among those with higher education and less likely for those with stressful (former) jobs. With regard to volunteering as a post-retirement activity – the focus of this study – research that recognizes the educational and occupational heterogeneity of retirees is virtually non-existent. This hiatus is remarkable, since differences in human capital, social class and status can be expected to matter for the effect of retirement on people's activities. For example, one person may be a highly educated managing director in a challenging environment and with many connections, while another does hard physical labor in a monotonous, repetitive job. People differ in their individual human capital and occupational background, and are likely to shape their post-retirement activities accordingly. There is some debate on the extent to which different types unpaid activities count as volunteering, and should be distinguished from each other (Wilson, 2000). A distinction is often made between formal volunteering, such as an active membership of a public association, and informal volunteering, such as driving an elderly neighbor to the store for groceries. Like most of the literature, this paper will employ a mostly formal definition of volunteering since such forms of unpaid activities may serve as the most satisfying substitutes for paid work (Brady et al., 1995, Chambré, 1984, Choi, 2003, Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006, Gerstel and Gallagher, 1994, Hank and Erlinghagen, 2009, Mutchler et al., 2003, Principi et al., 2012, Smith, 1994, Van den Bogaard et al., 2014 and Wilson and Musick, 1997b). Use is made of Dutch data from 2003 and 2007, nationally representative for men. Regarding retirement, the Netherlands does not deviate considerably from most Western-European countries (Commission of the European Union, 2000 and Euwals et al., 2009). Like in many other countries, policies on labor-market and retirement were under pressure and changing at the time of data collection. Working longer was being encouraged while early exit from the labor market was steadily becoming less financially attractive. Still, the general culture was and is one of the early exit with many people moving out of the labor force fully or partially before the age of 65. With regard to volunteering the Dutch pose a noteworthy case as the young old have some of the highest volunteering rates of Europe (Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006 and Hank and Erlinghagen, 2009), which partly reflects the relatively strong support of the government for voluntary organizations (Pichler & Wallace, 2007). Moreover, the nonprofit sector in the Netherlands was strongly influenced by the ‘pillarization’ of Dutch society, a phenomenon most prevalent from the second half of the 19th century until well into the 20th century. Dutch society was highly segregated, characterized by ‘pillars’, in which groups of people organized themselves along religious and political lines. As a result, each group (e.g., Catholics, Protestants, etc.) had its own newspapers, schools, and associations, boosting the total amount of nonprofit activities (Burger, Dekker, Toepler, Anheier, & Salamon, 1999). Although this paper focuses on men only because of data restraints, in terms of volunteering input there seems to be little difference between men and women in the Netherlands. The odds to volunteer are equal, but men invest a little more time once they volunteer (Van Ingen & Dekker, 2011). To what extent the specifics of the Dutch situation influence the generalizability of the results will discussed in the conclusions.

The primary contribution of this study lies in the provided insight into the heterogeneity of retirees regarding their post-retirement activities. It corroborates earlier findings that retirement increases volunteering, but more importantly, it provides clear support for the occupational diversity hypothesis that workers from higher status occupations volunteer more after retirement than workers from lower status occupations. Such evidence was not found for educational differences. However, education does have a consistent direct effect on volunteering. The question raised earlier, namely whether is it mostly education and human capital or rather status and class that are at work as stratifying factors is thus difficult to answer unequivocally. It seems that education remains an important predictor for volunteering in later life, but that the effect of retirement is largely determined by occupational status. The hypotheses were based on two distinct but connected arguments. The general retirement hypothesis argued that retirement means a steep rise in leisure time and the loss of contacts with colleagues. Volunteering offers social relationships as well as a gratifying way to spend leisure time, and can thus accommodate retirees, irrespective of their educational or occupational background. The data clearly supported this hypothesis, since retirement effects were found in all educational and occupational groups. The occupational diversity hypothesis proposed diversity among retirees from a life course perspective, arguing that the retirement transition is contextually embedded and influenced by personal history. It was theorized that high status occupations are characterized by more complexity, variety and challenges, fuelling the demand for alternative activities that feature these attributes, and that volunteer work fits these needs well. Because of that, retirees from high status occupations were expected to be more involved in volunteering. Again, there was clear support for this hypothesis: the impact of retirement on volunteering was found to be dependent on occupational status, measured in different ways. Thus, with regard to occupational background, this study provides support for the life course perspective in retirement research. Similarly derived from the life course perspective, the educational diversity hypothesis proposed that the impact of retirement on volunteering would be stronger for higher educational levels. However, while education does seem to boost volunteering directly, the educational level does not appear to moderate the retirement effect. No significant differences were found between lower and higher educated retirees with regard to their volunteering, which contrasts the findings discussed above. A possible explanation for this could be that at the retirement age, the period of education generally lies around 40 years in the past – years filled with work experiences and career development. In that sense, it can be understood that the more ‘recent’ occupational characteristics do seem to influence the relationship between retirement and volunteering while education has already ‘done its work’. Moreover, while retirement denotes the loss of the occupation, the educational level of a retiree is not lost but remains unaffected. The data used for this study incite some remarks. While the cross-sectional nature makes it difficult to firmly establish causal relations, the findings for the main retirement effect mirror those found with panel data (Hank and Erlinghagen, 2009, Mutchler et al., 2003 and Palmore et al., 1984). Another point regards the distinctiveness of the Netherlands with its high volunteering rates (Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006, Hank and Erlinghagen, 2009 and Suanet et al., 2009). The results of this study may thus be country specific, as Dutch retirees may experience a strong social norm to volunteer, leading to strong retirement effects on volunteering. However, the position of the Netherlands is not extreme, so it is likely that the results are at least partly representative for other Western countries. Finally, this study was limited to men only. The life course perspective would suggest different retirement outcomes for men and women because of gendered and discrepant life courses. With the rising labor force participation of women and aging of cohorts of working women, this is an interesting topic for future research. The strength of this study is not only that it adds to the literature by recognizing and revealing the educational and occupational heterogeneity of retirees for volunteering outcomes, it also suggests future research possibilities. From a life course perspective, there are many more outcomes of retirement that can be considered (e.g., well-being; relationships), and a wide range of moderating variables to take into account (e.g., sex; marital or parental status; retirement policies). Further, this study underscores the importance of volunteering for both retirees and society as a whole. Volunteering can be much more than a way to kill time. It can play an important part in the life of a person, providing resources of different kinds and gratifying experiences, irrespective of time investments. Still, it can be argued that the increase in volunteering hours is relatively small considering the total amount of leisure time retirement brings about. This raises the question how retirees fill the remainder of their time. Future research can perhaps shed light on this matter. Finally, volunteering can benefit society as a whole. This study has re-verified that retirees invest time in volunteering, but revealed that the size of the investment depends on occupational status. Policy makers can take this into account when thinking of strategies to promote volunteering.