By using different perspectives for evaluating a welfare system, we can reach different conclusions. The selection of an assessment tool is very important because its results might shape the public's attitudes towards the living quality of the poor and also affect a government's policies on the levels of welfare benefits. Thus, welfare evaluation can be a verdict on the fate of poor people, suppressing or pursuing equality and social justice in a society. In Chapters four to seven, human dignity has been used to assess the treatment of unemployed persons in four welfare systems. This chapter compares the welfare measures of the four systems and their impact on the dignity of unemployed persons. Also, welfare measures that enhance or suppress the dignity of welfare recipients are identified and discussed. As the unemployed are economically and very often politically weak, the treatment of unemployed persons tells us a lot about the nature of a welfare state, its distribution of political power and the social and economic positions of poor citizens.

Meeting physical needs

A person's physical and psychological well-being is fundamental to his or her survival and daily functioning. Three of the four selected countries use national insurance schemes to provide unemployed workers with income protection. Only Hong Kong does not have a state-managed unemployment insurance scheme, which reflects strong opposition from the business community since the 1960s. The Hong Kong government also uses the principle of the free market to justify its minimal labour welfare. For example, by rejecting seven labour ordinances granting more power to workers over collective bargaining, the former Chief Secretary of the Administration explained that these ordinances would adversely affect ‘harmonious labour relations’ and ‘Hong Kong's economic competitiveness and attractiveness to overseas investments’ (Chan, 1997). Hong Kong has been institutionalised as a free economy with an undemocratic polity. Politically, Article 16 of the Basic Law in Hong Kong's constitution states, ‘The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be vested with executive power’ (The Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR of the People's Republic of China, 1990, p 10). Economically, Article 108 of the Basic Law requires the HKSAR to continue the ‘low tax policy previously pursued in Hong Kong’ (Basic Law, 1990, p 39). Thus, Hong Kong's lack of a national insurance scheme is fundamentally related to its polity, which provides limited political participation for the working class (see Chapter Four for details).