ABSTRACT
The relationship between welfare policy and volunteering is of great importance in most western welfare states. One constant and controversial policy-relevant question is whether higher levels of welfare spending will ‘crowd out’ private initiative or whether, on the contrary, volunteering is supported by state expenditure. Quantitative examinations have tried to explore this issue (Menchik and Weisbrod 1987; Day and Devlin 1996) by relating overall government expenditure to measures of (organized) voluntary work. Although ‘crowding-out’ clearly predicts a negative relationship between these measures, the effects that have been identified are not very consistent across different policy areas (education, social services, health, etc.). However, the prominent Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (Salamon and Sokolowski 2001) started from a different assumption – that is, that state expenditure should be supportive of the voluntary sector. This research finds positive correlations between respective measures, although on a highly aggregated (cross-country) level. Their indicators for both social expenditure and volunteering are somewhat rudimentary, and therefore should be treated as indicative.
