Institutions, employment insecurity and polarization in support for unemployment benefits

Research has shown that workers’ support for public unemployment benefits (UB) depends on their level of employment insecurity: the insecure workers are more supportive of benefits than the secure workers. It can also be hypothesized that this polarization in support for UB is increased or decreased by the institutional settings of a country. We are particularly interested in two types of institutional conditions: the level of employment protection and the generosity of unemployment benefits. We discuss how public provision of social protection in terms of job security and income might motivate the subjectively secure and insecure workers in different ways and thereby polarize or unite support for unemployment benefits. We find that protection of temporary job contracts and generous unemployment benefits bring the attitudes of the secure and insecure closer together. We argue that the convergence of attitudes can be explained by the distribution of underlying social risks and existing social norms about solidarity.