16  13  Campbell et al (2011). 14  This was not estimated in Fujiwara et al (2014), but estimates of the impact of TV on well-being are available in Frey et al (2007). 15  The exact figure is £ from Fujiwara et al (2014). 16  This is for all employee jobs from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  If you multiply that per-person benefit by the 15 million or so regular volunteers, you get a private benefit of volunteering close to £ billion per year. 17 If you added in non-regular volunteers, you would get a larger number still. In other words, adding together private and economic benefits roughly doubles estimates of the value of volunteering, to something perhaps closer to £ billion per year. (b)  Health benefits  The Centre for Mental Health estimates that the economic and social costs of mental health problems are huge. The health and social care costs alone are worth over £ the associated output losses £ and the human costs over £ So anything that improves mental health, even in a small way, can make a big difference to social welfare. Volunteering is typically found to have a positive impact on mental health – for example, by enhancing social integration and engagement. 18 Certainly, that is what volunteers themselves say. Remaining active and socially engaged can be particularly important for older age groups, post-child raising and post-retirement.
Data quality is less good than for frequent volunteering, but ONS estimate this could add a further £ The ONS have recently put out an estimate of the total value of informal volunteering in 2012. It is nearly as significant as formal Informal volunteering (not through volunteering, and its contribution is organisations) estimated at £ (both frequent and infrequent). You need to make assumptions here about the role of capital, and the level of productivity in volunteer jobs. Based on rough calculations that treat volunteer jobs Official estimates only measure the value of labour inputs to volunteering, not the outputs. like labour-intensive service industries, the current method could be understating “output” by perhaps a quarter. But this is very uncertain. Hard to know whether volunteers perform in It could be that volunteers are less the same way as paid workers (whose productive than experienced workers in wages are used as a proxy for volunteer some jobs. But they might be more output) enthusiastic. 1.25*(18.6 + 1.7 + 23.9) -> gives you around Potential higher estimate (very uncertain) £ as a possible alternative estimate. Infrequent volunteering (less than once per month)  Source: Bank and Pro Bono Economics calculations. 24  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Figure 11: Survey responses for volunteering regularly  Source: 2006/07 Helping Out survey.