Summary

The study finds that participation in organization-bound volunteering by people in the second half of life remained stable under pandemic conditions. In the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in winter 2020/21, a similar number of people engaged in volunteering as in 2017, and the amount of time they spent volunteering also remained unchanged. This also applies across gender, age and educational groups—no statistically significant trend differences in volunteering participation or time spent volunteering were evident for any of these groups. The results are based on analyses of the 2017 and 2020/21 survey waves of the German Ageing Survey (DEAS).  

Further findings include the following: 

• Women are generally less likely to volunteer in organizations than men—and this did not change in the Covid-19 pandemic. 
• People with low or medium educational levels remained less likely to volunteer in organizations than people with high educational levels during the Covid-19 pandemic. 
• Volunteers did not change the time they devote to their voluntary work in the Covid-19 pandemic.