Lifestyle > Society > Volunteering and social support > Social support > Helped a stranger: Countries Compared

DEFINITION: A tool for valuing volunteering is provided by the new Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts, developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civic Society Studies in co-operation with the United Nations Statistics Division. The Handbook recommends that countries regularly produce “satellite accounts” of the non-profit sector, providing a comprehensive picture of its size and operation. So far, eight OECD countries have implemented this handbook, with data referring to a year between 1999 and 2004, and four additional countries are committed to do so in the future.

Beyond the comprehensive information available through these handbooks, information on the size of volunteering and social support is available for a larger number of countries through household surveys. The data presented here are drawn from the Gallup World Poll. Data on volunteering are based on the two following questions: “Have you donated money to an organization in the last month?” and “Have you volunteered your time to an organization in the last month?”. Data on social support from the same survey are based on the questions: “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them?” and “Have you helped a stranger or someone you didn’t know who needed help in the last month?”. Population shares are calculated as a percentage of all respondents excluding those who refused or didn’t’ know how to answer the various questions.

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Totals

#	COUNTRY	AMOUNT	DATE
1	Canada	66.02%	2004
2	United States	65.47%	2004
3	Australia	64.6%	2004
4	New Zealand	64.14%	2004
5	Switzerland	61.54%	2004
6	Austria	58.8%	2004
7	Ireland	58.69%	2004
8	United Kingdom	58.49%	2004
9	Netherlands	49.4%	2004
10	Norway	48.94%	2004
11	Germany	47.95%	2004
12	Sweden	47.61%	2004
	Group of 7 countries (G7) average (profile)	47.52%	2004
	High income OECD countries average (profile)	47.46%	2004
13	Spain	45.99%	2004
14	Belgium	45.98%	2004
15	Denmark	45.61%	2004
16	Finland	42.13%	2004
17	South Korea	41.55%	2004
18	Mexico	41.35%	2004
19	Hungary	38.81%	2004
20	Portugal	38.36%	2004
21	Czech Republic	38.33%	2004
22	France	38.16%	2004
23	Poland	36.52%	2004
24	Turkey	35.71%	2004
25	Greece	34.18%	2004
26	Italy	33.82%	2004
27	Slovakia	31.36%	2004
28	Japan	22.72%	2004

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