Unemployment and Prosocial Engagement: Behavior Changes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Successive social shocks have reinforced unemployment as a persistent issue, yet its impact on prosocial engagement remains underexplored. This study examines the relationship between job loss and prosocial behaviors, specifically volunteering and donating participation, hypothesizing that short-term unemployment acts as a negative personal shock with heterogeneous effects depending on individuals’ economic resources. Using nationally representative survey data from the United States collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, we employ propensity score weighting enhanced by a machine learning approach to address potential confounders. Our findings indicate that unemployment is associated with reduced formal volunteering participation among lower-income individuals and decreased participation in donating among higher-income individuals. However, we find no significant relationship between unemployment and informal volunteering. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that conventional methods, which fail to adequately control for confounders, tend to underestimate the negative impact of unemployment on prosocial behaviors.