contribution records and stable employment careers.6 By contrast, individuals who have paid only irregularly or low contributions to the social insurance systems due to unstable employ-ment do not qualify at all or only for low benefits. Hence, the main preference divide in terms of the insider/outsider differentiation is straightforward: insiders favor employment- and insurance-based social policiesthatgrant social rights and benefits according to contributions, while outsiders prefer redistributive social policies, which allocate rights and benefits on the basis ofneed. Hence, outsiders prefercompensation fortheir discontinuous andtenuouslabor market attachment in the form of needs-based redistribution (H1a). At the same time, we expect a negative relationship between outsiderness and support for social insurance (H1b).
Welfare states also differ with regard to whether they aim at passively compensating indi-viduals for income loss or at activating the beneficiaries. While activation can be achieved in a punitive ‘workfare’ logic through cutting benefits and lowering social minima, we think here of non-punitive activation policies that are in the interest of outsiders. These policies enhance opportunities for employment or reduce barriers for labor market entry by means of training, education, child care and active labor market policies (Bonoli and Natali, 2012). Such policies support labor market integration, thereby representing an alternative to needs-based redistri-bution. Outsiders should be particularly inclined to these policies, because stable and continu-ous access to the labor market is exactly what they lack. Hence, we expect a positive relationship between labor market vulnerability and support for activation (H1c).
Although we expect the relationship between labor market vulnerability and social policy preferences to hold across the entire workforce, we also argue that the effect of labor market vulnerability interacts with education levels and is particularly strong among the higher skilled. The previous section has argued that education and labor market vulnerability are crosscutting. We expect social policy preferences to differ between higher and lower skilled outsiders, because their labor market prospects and their specific social policy needs are not the same. High-skilled individuals have both the cognitive resources and the marketable skills to perform well in the labor market once they have the opportunity to make use of their humancapital. We therefore expect a positiveinteraction effectbetween outsiderness andedu-cationlevels on support foractivation policies (H2a). An example may helpillustrate this idea. Imagine a young university graduate who cannot find a stable job and an unemployed super-market cashier. Both are exposed to strong labor market risks. We assume that the former wants to make use of her education in the labor market, whereas the latter is concerned with covering his daily expenses with income from whatever source, be it labor market income or social transfer payments.
Regarding redistribution, we hypothesize that individuals with lower skill levels find it hard to earn a sufficient income through the market even if they have a stable job, given that they are generally disadvantaged in post-industrial labor markets. Hence, even lower skilled insiders may support redistribution. The more highly educated, however, have a higher earnings potential, which should make them less inclined toward redistribution unless they are in a vulnerable labor market position (this is where the cross-pressure is most evident). Hence, we expect the higher educated to support redistribution only if they are in a vulnerable labor market position. Consequently, we hypothesize that the level of