Two issues have emerged from studying the dignity of the unemployed in China, Hong Kong, the UK and Sweden. The first is the application of human dignity to the classification of welfare systems. The second is the impact of welfare-to-work strategies on human dignity. This first issue addresses the debate about classification models and the importance of using human dignity to assess the achievements of a welfare state. The second examines whether welfare-to-work policies enhance the dignity of unemployed persons, as governments claim they do.

Welfare regimes and human dignity

It is argued in Chapters Two and Three that rationality and sociability are intrinsic human capacities and that human beings strive for mutuality and autonomy. Under this approach, welfare policies are evaluated not for their market efficiency and economic achievement, but for their potential to create the conditions for realising the seven elements of human dignity identified in Chapter Three that enable people to live with autonomy and in harmony with one another. In other words, welfare systems will be evaluated for their achievements in promoting both material and non-material aspects of human dignity.

Both Richard Titmuss (1974) and Gosta Esping-Andersen (1990) have made important contributions to the comparative study of welfare states. Titmuss's thesis focused on the welfare relationships between the individual, the family, the market, and the state. Accordingly, he identified three models of social welfare: Residual Welfare, Industrial Achievement-Performance and Institutional Redistributive. In a Residual Welfare State, social welfare is expected to be provided by the family and the market. It is only the failure of these two institutions that justifies state involvement in welfare provision. In a welfare state which stresses Industrial Achievement-Performance, ‘social needs should be met on the basis of merit, work performance and productivity’ (Titmuss, 1974, p 31). On the other hand, a country which follows the Institutional Redistributive Model considers social welfare to be ‘a major integrated institution in society, providing universalist services outside the market on the principle of need’ (Titmuss, 1974, p 31). Titmuss's classification guides us in our investigation of the welfare role of social, economic and political institutions in different societies.

The most influential classification of welfare states was proposed by Esping-Andersen in 1990. He observed that there were three types of welfare regime based on their decommodification of welfare and its stratification along social class lines.