Who Participates : The Supply of Volunteer Labor and the Distribution of Government Programs in Rural Peru
Numerous analysts have linked volunteering and participation to positive economic and political outcomes. The author uses the 1994 Peru Living Standards Measurement Survey to analyze volunteering patterns in rural Peru. He finds that volunteers in...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/09/1570716/participates-supply-volunteer-labor-distribution-government-programs-rural-peru http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19557 |
| Summary: | Numerous analysts have linked
volunteering and participation to positive economic and
political outcomes. The author uses the 1994 Peru Living
Standards Measurement Survey to analyze volunteering
patterns in rural Peru. He finds that volunteers in rural
Peru have a high opportunity cost of time. They are more
educated and more likely to hold a job. Other household
characteristics, such as gender, marital status, length of
residence, and ethnicity, are also important predictors of
the probability of volunteering. Controlling for household
characteristics, communities differ widely in aggregate
volunteer levels. These differences seem unrelated to
differences in patterns of government expenditures.
Volunteering may have important benefits in building social
capital and encouraging greater ownership of development
projects. For example, many public programs in rural Peru
and elsewhere ask that the intended beneficiaries
"participate" as a means of building trust and
social capital, increasing the sustainability of investments
and helping self-target investments to the poor. But the
author finds that encouraging participation by potential
beneficiaries is unlikely to be an effective form of
self-targeting, since people with a higher opportunity cost
of time volunteer more. Moreover, social programs that
require participation may have difficulty reaching some
vulnerable groups, such as women and the illiterate. |
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