Politicization Then and Now (Re: [lbo-talk] Alito & disability

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

> groups over the last decades.   The number of people as a 
> percentage of the 
> population involved in some sort of volunteer or civic group 
> is  stillquite 
> astounding in America.   And while it's hard to know how to 

Not really.  First, Europeans are bigger than US-ers on volunteering
http://www.jhu.edu/~cnp/pdf/table101.pdf

Furthermore, the US data come from the 1996 Independent Sector survey of
volunteering and giving that has been criticized on methodological grounds.

According to BLS estimates based on CPS data, 
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2004/dec/wk2/art05.htm
the rate of volunteering in the US is about half that estimated by the
Independent Sector Survey.  Therefore it is safe to cut the US volunteering
data shown in the above table by about half - which puts the US way below
Europe.  On the top of it, about a third of it is "religious volounteering"
- whicj is much lower in Europe (except the UK).  

Wojtek