Volunteering in Germany: key findings of the Fifth German Survey on Volunteering (FWS 2019)

In 2019, 28.8 million people are engaged in voluntary work in Germany, representing 39.7 per cent of the country’s population aged 14 and above. This rate of volunteering has remained steady between 2014 and 2019. The rate of people engaged in volunteering has grown over the last twenty years. In 2019, 39.7 per cent of people aged 14 and above living in Germany are involved in some voluntary activity. In the year 1999 that figure was only 30.9 per cent. Looking at the figures over time, similar rates of volunteering can be seen in the years 1999, 2004 and 2009 (30.9, 32.7 and 31.9 per cent respectively), and also similar rates between the years 2014 and 2019 (40.0 and 39.7 per cent respectively). For the first time, we present the results of all waves of the Survey on Volunteering additionally weighted by educational attainment. This is necessary due to the fact that people with higher educational attainment are often overrepresented in survey studies, and, at the same time, also tend to be more involved in voluntary work than people with a low or medium educational level. The current results – now weighted throughout by educational attainment – describe the factual situation in the population more accurately than the figures reported previously. The rates of volunteering for all survey waves have fallen by three to four percentage points as a result of the additional weighting for education as compared to the rates as calculated before conducting that weighting. Looking at rates of volunteering over time, the level changes, but the trend of increasing volunteer rates over the last twenty years essentially remains intact. For the first time since 1999, women and men show no difference in terms of their rates of volunteering in 2019. Whereas men have consistently volunteered to a larger extent than women in every wave since 1999, the figures for 2019 have, for the first time ever, yielded no statistically significant gender difference in rates of volunteering (women: 39.2 per cent, men: 40.2 per cent). This can be ascribed to the fact that numbers for women engaged in voluntary work have increased faster than for their male peers. An additional factor is the fact that the rate for men engaged in voluntary work fell a little between 2014 and 2019. The rate of volunteering has grown in all age groups since 1999. However, this rate of growth has differed from age group to age group. The increase has been particularly pronounced among people aged 65 and above: the rate of volunteering for that age category has risen from only 18.0 per cent in 1999 to 31.2 per cent in 2019. The highest rate of volunteering for 2019 is found among those aged between 30 and 49 years, with 44.7 per cent. The rate for those from 14 to 29 years is 42.0, and 40.6 per cent for 50- to 64-year-olds. The differences in the rates of volunteering between different educational groups have increased between 1999 and 2019. This can be ascribed to the fact that the rates of volunteering among people still attending school and among people with higher-level school education have increased more than for people with medium- level school education. In the case of people with a lower-level school qualification, the rate of volunteering has not changed significantly between 1999 and 2019. In 2019, people with higher-level school education are involved in voluntary activities at a rate of 51.1 per cent, while the rate for those with medium-level school education is 37.4 per cent, and 26.3 per cent for those with a lower level of education. The rate of volunteering for people with a migrant background has not changed in the period between 2014 and 2019. In both 2014 and 2019, people with a migrant background became involved in voluntary work at a lower rate than people without a migrant background. Whereas in 2019 people without a migrant background became active in voluntary work at a rate of 44.4 per cent, the rate for people with a migrant background was 27.0 per cent. Within the group of people with a migrant background, those who have no personal experience of immigration tend to be more likely to volunteer than people who have experienced immigration personally. The rate of volunteering among people with a migrant background born in Germany and with German citizenship is 38.7 per cent in 2019. The differences in rates of volunteering in eastern and western Germany have progressively narrowed since 1999. In 2019, the rate of volunteering in eastern Germany (including Berlin), at 37.0 per cent, is now only 3.4 percentage points lower than the rate for western Germany, at 40.4 per cent. In 1999, the difference in rates of volunteering between the two regions was as much as 7.9 percentage points. Eight per cent of volunteers are involved in voluntary activities for refugees or asylum seekers in 2019. Women are more involved in voluntary activities for refugees or asylum seekers (at 8.9 per cent) than men (at 7.2 per cent). People of the various age groups carry out voluntary activities for refugees and asylum seekers to an equal extent – no statistically significant differences can be seen between the age groups. In 2019, about seventeen per cent of volunteers dedicate a major portion of their time to their voluntary activity, spending six or more hours per week on such activity. There has been an ongoing trend since 1999 towards less time-intensive voluntary activity: between 1999 and 2019, the percentage of volunteers who dedicate a major proportion of their time to such activity with six or more hours per week, fell by 5.9 percentage points. In the same period, the percentage of those dedicating significantly less time in their voluntary activity – up to two hours per week – in-creased (1999: 50.8 per cent; 2019: 60.0 per cent). One in every four volunteers exercises a management or board position in their voluntary activity. The proportion of volunteers taking on a management or board position has fallen over time. In 1999, 36.8 per cent of volunteers were involved in a leadership role, while the figure for 2019 has fallen to 26.3 per cent. In 2019, a large proportion of volunteers are using the internet as part of their voluntary activity. A total of 57.0 per cent of volunteers, in 2019, indicate that they use the internet for their voluntary activity. This figure has remained at a similar level since 2009. In 2004, the survey wave in which internet usage for voluntary activity was first recorded, the figure was 39.2 per cent