The contribution of social resources to volunteering

Volunteer work calls for both individual and social resources. While they e ach make an independent contribution, they also interact with each other. S ocial capital is most productively used by those richly endowed with indivi dual resources. Using two-wave panel data from the Americans' Changing Live s study, we estimated the effects of human capital (education), social clas s (occupational status, family income, and family assets), formal and infor mal social interaction, and network size and density on range of volunteer activities and hours spent volunteering. The main effects of human and soci al capital discovered in previous studies are replicated. Interaction terms reveal that social capital is a better predictor of both range and amount of volunteering among people with higher social status and more human capit al.