National 2006 Voluntary Work Survey: more Australians volunteering
Results from the national 2006 Voluntary Work Survey just released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that over one third of Australian adults participate in voluntary work.
They contributed 713 million hours to the community across diverse
activities.
Women volunteered more commonly than men (36% compared to 32%) and, with few exceptions, this was the case regardless of birthplace, family status, labour force status or the areas in which they lived.
Seniors tended to spend more time doing voluntary work than their
younger counterparts.
The types of organisations that volunteers gave most time to were
sport/physical recreation (26% of all voluntary work hours),
community/welfare (19%), religious (17%) and education and training (10%) organisations.
The volunteer rate has risen from 24% to 32% and to 35% from the
1995 and 2000 voluntary work surveys. Increases occurred for both sexes and most age groups.
The 2006 Census also asked questions about voluntary work and these figures will be valuable analysis of rates at the local area level.
