The paper compares the experience of unemployment in Britain with that in three former state socialist societies - Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, countries with relatively recent welfare systems, providing a low level of coverage for the unemployed. The analysis examines the implications of the different types of welfare regime for financial stress, for social isolation and for psychological wellbeing. While it finds that the implications of welfare arrangments depend considerably on the nature of the labour market, it concludes that the combination of very high unemployment with low welfare coverage - exemplified by the case of Bulgaria - has exceptionally high social and personal costs. There is no evidence that these are offset by the emergence of alternative welfare arrangements based on community solidarities.
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