What Makes Us Help? The Surprising Roots of Volunteering

What makes someone grow up to volunteer their time to help others? Researchers asked this question by looking at the childhood experiences of over 200,000 people across 22 countries. They wanted to know: what happened in these people's early years that might relate to giving back later in life?

Altruism can be born of suffering, as people who have known hardship turn their pain into purpose.

The team looked at 11 different childhood factors: from family relationships and money to health, religion, and even painful experiences like abuse. What they found was both expected and surprising. On the expected side, kids who grew up in families that lived comfortably financially were about 10% more likely to volunteer as adults. Kids who had a good relationship with their father were also more likely to volunteer later in life.

And the strongest predictor of all was religious attendance: kids who went to religious services weekly at age 12 were 61% more likely to volunteer as adults compared to those who never attended. This pattern showed up in almost every country studied. But here's where things get surprising. People who experienced physical or sexual abuse as children were 16% more likely to volunteer as adults. And people who felt like outsiders in their own families growing up were 17% more likely to volunteer.

These findings seem to go against what we might expect: that hardship leads to worse outcomes. Instead, some people who went through painful childhoods may have developed deeper empathy or a stronger desire to help others, possibly as a way to find meaning or connection. The researchers also found that, on average across countries, women were less likely to volunteer than men. However, this varied a lot by country: in Poland, for example, women were actually more likely to volunteer. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that there's no single story about what leads someone to give their time. Both positive childhood experiences (like financial comfort and strong family bonds) and painful ones (like abuse and feeling left out) were associated with more volunteering. And the way these childhood factors played out differed significantly from country to country, reminding us that culture and community context matter deeply.