Volunteering, subjective well-being and public policy

► Volunteering regularly increases subjective well-being of the volunteers. ► This effect is not subject to hedonic adaptation but increases over time. ► Volunteering does not increase SWB of the happiest quantiles in the distribution. ► This points to a protective role of volunteering. ► Public policy makers have various means to stimulate volunteering and thus happiness. We apply matching estimators to the large-scale British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data set to estimate the impact of volunteering on subjective well-being. We take into account personality traits that could jointly determine volunteering behaviour and subjective well-being. We find that the impact of regular volunteering on subjective well-being is positive and increasing over time if regular volunteering is sustained. In a quantile analysis, we find that this effect seems to be driven by reducing the unhappiness of the less happy quantiles of the well-being distribution for those who volunteer regularly. We test the robustness of our findings and discuss their relevance for public policy.