Childhood Poverty, Volunteer Participation, and Self-Rated Health In Later Life: Evidence from South Korea

Background and Purpose: Cumulative disadvantage theory posits that early-life socioeconomic deprivation creates cascading disadvantages across the life course, resulting in health disparities in later life. Childhood poverty consistently correlates with poorer health outcomes in old age. However, whether engagement in prosocial activities such as volunteering can attenuate these long-term health outcomes remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between childhood poverty and self-rated health among Korean older adults and tested whether volunteer participation moderates this association.

Methods: We used data from the 18th wave of the Korean Welfare Panel Study. The analytic sample was restricted to adults aged 65 and older (N = 5,949). Childhood poverty was measured using a retrospective self-report item asking about household economic conditions during childhood on a 5-point scale (1 = very poor, 2 = poor, 3 = average, 4 = wealthy, 5 = very wealthy). We classified respondents scoring 1–2 as having experienced childhood poverty and those scoring 3–5 as non-poverty. Volunteer participation was coded as a binary indicator. Self-rated health was measured on a 5-point scale and dichotomized into healthy (1) versus unhealthy (0). We performed a hierarchical logistic regression across three models. Model 1 included only covariates (gender, age, marital status, education, disability status, region, and household income). Building on Model 1, Model 2 included childhood poverty and volunteer participation. Model 3 further added the interaction term between childhood poverty and volunteer participation.

Results: Model 1 included control variables only (Pseudo R² = .074), with age, gender, marital status, education, disability status, region, and income significantly associated with self-rated health. In Model 2 (Pseudo R² = .075), childhood poverty was not significantly associated with self-rated health, while volunteer participation was independently associated with better self-rated health (p < .001). Model 3 added the interaction term (Pseudo R² = .076), which was statistically significant (B = .727, p < .05), indicating that the effect of volunteer participation on self-rated health was stronger among those who experienced childhood poverty. Among older adults who experienced childhood poverty, volunteers showed a higher predicted probability of reporting good self-rated health (Pr = .797) compared to non-volunteers (Pr = .614, p < .001), whereas no significant difference was found in those without childhood poverty (Pr = .677 vs. .624, p = .207).

Conclusions and Implications: These findings suggest that volunteer participation may interrupt the effect of cumulative health disadvantage stemming from childhood poverty, highlighting the potential role of late-life social engagement to promote health. Based on the findings, first, we suggest that community-based programs should actively recruit and retain older adults with histories of economic disadvantage in volunteer roles. Second, senior centers, faith-based organizations, and aging service providers should develop volunteer opportunities with low barriers to participation, including flexible scheduling and transportation support, to minimize barriers to participation for economically marginalized older adults. Third, at the policy level, volunteer programs for older adults should be integrated into broader social determinants of health frameworks, recognizing volunteerism as a health-promoting intervention rather than a leisure activity.