Helping others and volunteering

I'd say most people who help regularly do it because it gives them a sense of being needed, and I don't mean that cynically. A retired teacher who tutors the children on her street for free is getting something back, namely a role and a reason to leave the house, and that is precisely why she keeps doing it year after year. Pure self-sacrifice tends to burn out quickly; help that rewards both sides lasts. Whether neighbours help each other less than before is a harder question. In big cities I think they clearly do, simply because people rent for a year or two and move on, so there is no time to build up the kind of trust where you'd hand someone your house keys. That said, the help hasn't vanished so much as changed address. During the floods in central Vietnam, strangers raised huge sums online within days, which would have been impossible a generation ago. So we are less neighbourly but arguably no less generous. As for young people and volunteering, I expect the numbers to rise, though partly for the wrong reasons. Universities and employers now look for it on applications, so plenty of teenagers will sign up to pad their CVs. I'm not too bothered by that, to be honest. Someone who spends a summer teaching in a remote village for selfish reasons still teaches the children, and quite often the experience turns a box-ticking exercise into a genuine commitment.