Segmented paths, shared beliefs? Employment histories and welfare preferences in Chile

In Latin America, employment status consistently fails to predict redistributive attitudes. This is a puzzle given that labor market informality shapes access to social protection. Yet most studies rely on cross-sectional data, overlooking how cumulative work trajectories across the life course structure welfare preferences. This article examines how formal and informal employment histories shape current preferences for redistribution and taxation among Chileans born between 1938 and 1963.

Using a specially designed survey with a life-history calendar administered to 792 older Chileans, we reconstruct individual employment trajectories between ages 30 and 60. Sequence analysis and hierarchical clustering identify typical trajectory types, which are then related to preferences for redistribution and taxation through logistic regression models.

We identify trajectories ranging from persistently formal to erratic to inactive. Individuals with erratic or inactive trajectories are significantly more likely to favor targeted benefits over universalism and less likely to hold fiscal citizenship attitudes toward broad-based domestic taxation.

These findings challenge two sets of expectations. First, they qualify the cross-sectional evidence suggesting that formal and informal workers in Latin America hold similar preferences. Second, and more surprisingly, they run counter to conventional welfare state theory, which predicts that workers with precarious or interrupted employment histories would push for universal benefits as a form of social insurance. Instead, we find the opposite: cumulative employment instability appears to breed support for targeted transfers and weaker fiscal citizenship. By adopting a life-course perspective, we show that trajectory may be a key driver of divergent welfare preferences in the region.