The Nature of Giving Time to Your Child’s School

Abstract

How do households view contributions of time (via volunteering/fundraising) to their children’s schools? Time contributions produce a public good (improved school quality for all students) and private benefits (e.g., better class placement). If private benefits increase with number of own children at a school and households value private benefits, then the level of contribution should be affected by the number of own children enrolled at a single school. Using a nationally representative sample of more than 2,500 multichild households, I find that time contributions have a statistically significant relationship with number of own children enrolled in the same school. For example, households with multiple children at the same school have a 13 percentage points higher propensity to volunteer at the school than households with a single child in each school. This result implies that private benefits have a strong influence on the parents’ decision to contribute time to their children’s schools.