Mandatory Community Service and Civic Engagement

The decline in civic engagement has prompted scholars and policymakers to explore the role of education. One approach gaining traction is mandatory community service, which requires middle and high school students to complete a set number of community service hours as a condition for graduation. However, evidence on the long-term effects of such policies remains mixed, often due to challenges such as self-selection bias. South Korea’s rapid, nationwide implementation of mandatory community service offers a rare opportunity to examine the causal impact of this policy. Using this context, we analyze whether the policy influenced civic engagement outcomes across multiple domains, including participation in civic associations, trust in society, news consumption, volunteering, and donating. Our findings show that mandatory community service increased volunteering participation among individuals with lower educational attainment, and modestly increased political group participation among those with higher educational attainment. However, we find no evidence that the policy significantly affected other forms of civic engagement. We argue that debates on mandatory community service must grapple with the nuanced implications of its implementation, considering both its targeted successes and its broader limitations.