Extracurricular Involvement in High School and Later-Life Participation in Voluntary Associations

Scholars have identified participation in voluntary associations as a central component of civic engagement for younger and older people alike. However, there has been little longitudinal examination of how such participation potentially fluctuates across multiple periods of the life course, as well as the extent to which involvement in youth is associated with participation in later life.

We used data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study-which is among the oldest and most comprehensive cohort studies in the United States to date. Respondents reported their voluntary association participation periodically between the ages of approximately 36 and 72 years. Data collected from high school yearbooks were used to examine whether histories of extracurricular involvement in adolescence were associated with patterns of voluntary association participation across adulthood.

Results from growth curve models indicated that, on average, voluntary association participation peaked in midlife and declined into the 60s and early 70s. Nevertheless, levels of participation were consistently higher among individuals with greater extracurricular involvement in high school, and the rate of decline in participation from midlife to young-old age was also less steep for these individuals.

Findings support conceptualizing voluntary association participation among older adults as part of life course trajectories of participation, with influences originating as early as adolescence.