Introduction

In social science and economics it is a widely held notion that volunteers not only contribute goods and services to others but also benefit themselves. Indeed, it is frequently assumed that people would not contribute goods and services to others unless they somehow benefited or profited from the exchange (Musick and Wilson, 2008; Smith and Wang, 2016). While social scientists typically consider the personal benefits of volunteering as being unintended consequences of action initially guided by other motives, economists frequently assume that the expectation of benefits is an important part of people's motives for volunteering (Andreoni, 1990).

While there is widespread agreement in the literature that volunteers benefit from their actions, there is little agreement on the nature, extent and distribution of these benefits. Some social scientists have suggested that the benefits of volunteering are manifold and diverse, including emotional, social, health and labour market benefits (Musick and Wilson, 2008). Other social scientists have argued that the benefits of volunteering ultimately reduce the ‘positive experiences’ that people from dominant-status groups enjoy when they act in accordance with socioculturally approved norms (Smith and Wang, 2016: 638). Economists have frequently argued that people can be understood as ‘impure altruists’, meaning that while they may choose to volunteer in part because they want to do good for others, they simultaneously do so because they want to experience a ‘warm-glow’, referring to the feeling that people experience in their bodies and minds when they are emotionally satisfied (Andreoni, 1990).

Even though social scientists and economists often theorise about the possible benefits of volunteering, our knowledge about them rests on a remarkably fragile empirical foundation. In this chapter, I suggest that the Nordic countries can be viewed as a valuable yet largely unexploited ‘laboratory’ for the study of the possible labour market and health benefits of volunteering. The reason for this is that it is possible to merge survey data that includes information about volunteering with high-quality longitudinal administrative register data that includes information about labour market and health outcomes at the individual level. The combination of survey and register data presents researchers with unique opportunities to relate people's volunteering behaviour to changes in their subsequent labour market and health trajectories.