Social Contact and the Relationship with Divorce

Abstract

This study investigated the consequence of divorce for a person’s contact with friends,relatives and neighbors. The Swiss Household Panel was used, which provided a large, nationally representative and recent sample of respondents. The liberation- and isolation hypotheses formulated by Kalmijn and Broese van Groenou (2005) were tested, and their main findings were confirmed. Furthermore, hypotheses were tested concerning whether educational attainment influenced the effect of divorce on social contact. However, no significant effect was found.