Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Ahead of Print.
This study investigates whether divorcees feel less worse-off when divorce is more prevalent around them. The 2013 Life Satisfaction Survey in Türkiye, which has approximately 196,000 observations and province-level representative data, is utilized. We used three province-level indicators about the prevalence of divorce to measure the impact of the social context on divorcees’ well-being. First, we replicate the previous findings that divorce is associated with lower happiness. Secondly, regardless of the measure used, living in a divorce-prevalent setting slightly mitigates the happiness disadvantage of divorcees. Thirdly, perceived social pressure plays a role in the lower happiness of divorcees regardless of the provincial divorce prevalence measures. Overall, the results show that the substantial psychological costs of divorce remain even after addressing the social dimensions of divorce with different measures.