Labor Market Risk Depends on Who You Support: New Findings from Experiments and Surveys

How do household dependency relations shape demand for social insurance? Using survey experiments, we find that willingness to support policies insuring against labor market risk increases when people depend on others but not vice versa. Our results highlight a novel asymmetry in how mutual versus unilateral dependence affects attitudes toward redistribution.

Our Methods: Surveys coupled with laboratory experiments involving hypothetical scenarios about employment status and dependency relationships.

Key Findings:

• Unemployment risk significantly shapes policy preferences
• Asymmetric dependence (relying on others) boosts support for social insurance policies, while symmetric relations do not
• The welfare state's responsiveness to labor market vulnerability depends critically on the direction of economic interdependence

Why It Matters: These findings illuminate why existing theories about welfare states often overlook household dependencies and clarify how dependency status might shape political behavior.