Continuous PNAD
Voluntary work increases by 840 thousand persons in 2017
April 18, 2018 10h00 AM | Last Updated: June 05, 2018 10h56 AM
Voluntary work was carried out by 7.4 million persons in 2017, 840 thousand more than in 2016. Despite the increase in the number of persons, the average hours dedicated per week, per individual, fell from 6.7 to 6.3 hours last year. This information comes from the Other forms of work module of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey 2017 - Continuous PNAD, released today by the IBGE, which also raised data on production for own consumption, household tasks and care of persons among persons aged 14 years and over.
The practice of voluntary work increased according to the schooling level. While only 2.9% of the uneducated persons or persons with incomplete primary education carried out voluntary work, this proportion rises to 8.1% among those with complete higher education. Alessandra Brito, analyst of Labor and Income, highlighted some hypotheses that explain this result: "It could be caused by the greater access to information by the graduated population, who knows where to look for this type of work. Persons with complete higher education are usually better inserted in the labor market, have more spare time and are more conscious than those less educated".
The survey pointed out that the large majority (91%) of the persons carrying out voluntary work did it through enterprises, organizations or institutions. The individual activity was restricted to the other 9% that practiced voluntary work.
Alessandra mentioned that the figures in this module of the Continuous PNAD can be larger, since the concept of voluntary work needs to be better disseminated: "many people still relate voluntary work to doing something for an asylum or a non-governmental organization. We should have in mind that taking your neighbor to the doctor, helping a friend with some task or staying with you neighbor granddaughter while he is at work are examples of individual voluntary work.".
What is voluntary work
The Continuous PNAD considers voluntary work that non-compulsory work, carried out at least for an hour in the reference week of the survey, not paying any compensation in cash or benefits, aiming at producing goods and services to persons who do not live in the household and are not relatives of the interviewee.
