Who Participates : The Supply of Volunteer Labor and the Distribution of Government Programs in Rural Peru

Schady, Norbert R.

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGED;    ANALYTICAL WORK;    BENEFICIARY ASSESSMENT;    CASE STUDY;    CIVIL SOCIETY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-2671
RP-ID  :  WPS2671

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Numerous analysts have linkedvolunteering and participation to positive economic andpolitical outcomes. The author uses the 1994 Peru LivingStandards Measurement Survey to analyze volunteeringpatterns in rural Peru. He finds that volunteers in ruralPeru have a high opportunity cost of time. They are moreeducated and more likely to hold a job. Other householdcharacteristics, such as gender, marital status, length ofresidence, and ethnicity, are also important predictors ofthe probability of volunteering. Controlling for householdcharacteristics, communities differ widely in aggregatevolunteer levels. These differences seem unrelated todifferences in patterns of government expenditures.Volunteering may have important benefits in building socialcapital and encouraging greater ownership of developmentprojects. For example, many public programs in rural Peruand elsewhere ask that the intended beneficiaries"participate" as a means of building trust andsocial capital, increasing the sustainability of investmentsand helping self-target investments to the poor. But theauthor finds that encouraging participation by potentialbeneficiaries is unlikely to be an effective form ofself-targeting, since people with a higher opportunity costof time volunteer more. Moreover, social programs thatrequire participation may have difficulty reaching somevulnerable groups, such as women and the illiterate.