More or less help? A longitudinal investigation of positive and negative consequences of divorce for informal helping

Abstract

As divorce rates have risen, scholars have expressed concern that a breakdown of traditional family bonds might negatively influence community life. This study examines the impact of divorce on one form of community involvement, namely informal community helping, and whether this impact depends on household income, having adult children and being full-time employed. We hypothesized that informal community helping can both increase and decrease after divorce and that the impact of divorce is smaller for people with higher household income, adult children or a full-time job. Utilizing longitudinal data from the first four waves (1986–2002) of the Americans’ Changing Lives panel study (N = 6,185), this study employed fixed-effects regression models. These demonstrated that people did not change their informal community helping after divorce. The impact of divorce did not depend on household income or full-time employment, but people with adult children increased their informal community helping after divorce less than average.