WASHINGTON -- As the holiday season spotlights acts of kindness and giving back, a new federal study shows that one in four Americans volunteered through an organization and two-thirds helped their neighbors last year. Collectively, Americans volunteered nearly 7.7 billion hours last year. 

This year's annual report by Volunteering and Civic Life in America, released by the Corporation for National and Community Service and the National Conference on Citizenship, finds that 62.6 million adults (25.4%) volunteered through an organization in 2013. Assigned value of this volunteer service is nearly $173 billion.

In addition, more than 138 million Americans (62.5%) also engaged in informal volunteering in their communities, helping neighbors with tasks such as watching each other's children, or house sitting. Other findings: 68.5% have dinner with their family nearly every day while 75.7% see or hear from friends and family at least a few times a week. More than a third (36.3%) are involved in a school, civic, recreational, religious, or other organization.

The polling shows that overall rate of volunteering is slightly lower than the previous year, but the overall rate remains stable across demographic lines:

• Americans ages 35 to 44 had the highest rate (31.3%) followed by those ages 45 to 54 (29.4%). One in five (21.7%) of those defined as Millennials -- those 16 to 31 --  volunteered.
• The age groups with the highest median hours among volunteers are ages 65 to 74 (92 hours) and those 75 and older (90 hours).
• Parents with children under age 18 (32.9%) volunteer more than the population as a whole (25.4%) and persons without children under 18 (22.7%).
• The volunteer rate among young adults (ages 18 to 24) who attend college was 26.7%, nearly double the rate of young adults not in college (13.5%).

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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