Features and prospects of the development of social sphere of the village under conditions of decentralization: regional aspects

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Features and prospects of the development of social sphere of the village under conditions of decentralization: regional aspects

Alla Sokolova

Tatiana Ratoshniuk

Myhaylo Martynyuk

Viktor Ratoshniuk

Purpose

The purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities and substantiate the prospects for the development of the social sphere of the rural areas of the Western Polissia of Ukraine in the conditions of decentralization of management.

Results

The peculiarities of the development of the social sphere of the rural areas of the studied region in the conditions of the decentralization reform in the country with the aim of forming effective local self-government and territorial organization of power in order to create and maintain a full- fledged living environment for villagers and provide high-quality and accessible public services are revealed. It was established that the priority tasks of social policy in the countryside in the conditions of decentralization should be: ensuring the solution of the basic problems of reproduction of people's life activities (food, housing, health); infrastructure development (roads, transport, communications, public services); creation of conditions for development (education, science, culture, sports).

Scientific novelty

It has been proven that in the conditions of decentralization transformations, in order to ensure the development of the social sphere, it is important to achieve balanced interbudgetary relations, to combine the allocation of financial resources from the state budget and funds from local budgets, which will provide all the needs for the development of social infrastructure in the village. This will create ample opportunities to meet people's needs in modern education, medicine, social, communal, administrative and other services.

Practical value

The practical significance of the obtained results lies in the fact that the conclusions and well-founded proposals will ensure the development of such a level of social infrastructure in the village, which would ensure the satisfaction of the needs of local residents in basic household needs, administrative services and become a motivational incentive for the economically active population to live in rural areas.

Key words: social sphere, rural areas, decentralization, rural development, social infrastructure.

Introduction

decentralized management western polissya

One of the main components of the standard of living of the rural population, which determines its comfort and is directly related to life activities and social relations, is the social sphere. For the revival and development of the Ukrainian countryside, it is first of all necessary to overcome the existing problems in the social sphere and, most importantly, to eliminate the reasons that led to its decline. Rural areas are the most important elements of the strategic potential of the state, therefore the quality of life of the rural population is one of the indicators of the effectiveness of the decentralization reform. The directions and forms of the modern transformation of rural settlements (small, medium, large or large village) and their main sociodemographic and organizational and economic characteristics form the prerequisites and possibilities for the further implementation of decentralization transformations. The reform of local self-government, which began in 2014, shows not only an increase in the number of created united territorial communities, but also positive results of the above changes: development and increase in the number of social infrastructure objects; growth of revenues and capital expenditures of local budgets; implementation of the “Rural Medicine” program; creation of a network of Centers for the provision of administrative services and revival of the Ukrainian countryside as a whole. At the same time, part of the social purpose facilities, their network continues to degrade. Today, the construction of new paved roads, engineering facilities, housing, communal and social and cultural facilities has almost completely stopped in rural areas. The complexity and multifacetedness of the existing problems necessitates the formation of new approaches to ensuring the social development of the village based on the improvement of the social sphere management system in the conditions of decentralization transformations.

Review of literature. Such well-known domestic scientists made a significant contribution to the study of theoretical, methodological and applied aspects of the development of the social sphere of the village as: O. Borodina & I. Prokopa [1], V. Zalizko [2], T. Zinchuk et al. [3], M. Malik & M. Khvesyk [4], Z. Nazarchuk [5], N. Patyka & O. Bulavka [6], V. Riabokon [7], P. Sabluk et al. [8], O. Shpykuliak et al. [9] etc. Such foreign economists as T. Dax & M. Fisher [10], N. Dawson [11], G. Guastella & S. Pareglio [12], T. Marsden et al. [13], J. Mensah [14], D. Nakamura [15], F. Navarro et al. [16] and others paid attention to this issue. In the context of this study V. Tkachuk et al. note that the social infrastructure of rural areas is a network of enterprises, institutions, institutions, as well as individual services (with their material base, employees, economic and other connections), which ensures the social, cultural and residential conditions of the rural population with the aim of guaranteeing the reproduction of the labor force and improving the quality of life of the rural population [17, p. 51]. According to well-known agricultural economists M. Malik & M. Khvesyk, over the past decades in the development of the social sphere in the village, there has been a degradation of its material and technical base (in many regions,

the processes of this degradation have already gone beyond the critical limit); the destruction of the social infrastructure of the village is taking place, which is a consequence of the unsystematic solution of the tasks of the agrarian reform in Ukraine [4, p. 7]. Investigating the strategic priorities of the development of rural areas, V. Zalizco notes that the goal of village development is its viability, which directly depends on the extent to which rural communities can maintain local social infrastructure at an adequate level, have access to a wide range of services [2, p. 56]. It is the development of local self-government, the decentralization of power and the transfer of resources and powers to localities within the framework of the administrative reform, as indicated by T. Zinchuk et al., will primarily contribute to increasing the financial capacity, investment attractiveness of rural areas and creating conditions for high-quality and comfortable living of the rural population [3]. We agree with the opinion of the scientists of the State University “Institute of Economics and Forecasting of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine” that in the conditions of the process of decentralization of power in Ukraine, new opportunities for the development of rural areas appear [1]. Paying tribute to the existing achievements of scientists, we note that the processes of decentralization taking place in Ukraine cause new challenges regarding the prospects for the development of the social sphere, its financing and revival.

Materials and methods. The purpose of the study is to reveal the peculiarities and substantiate the prospects for the development of the social sphere of the rural areas of the Western Polissia of Ukraine under the conditions of decentralization of management. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is dialectical, systemic and synergistic scientific approaches, the use of which in the study of rural development is determined by the orientation towards building a Euro-oriented society in Ukraine. The following scientific methods were used in the research process: abstract-logical, in particular the methods of induction and deduction, analogy and comparison; operationalization of concepts; the method of theoretical generalization and analysis and synthesis; various techniques of the economic and statistical method (statistical observation, comparison, tabular), etc. The information base of the study was served by: statistical data of the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine, the Main Statistics Offices in the Volyn, Zhytomyr, Rivne, and Chernihiv regions; materials of the departments of agro-industrial development of the relevant regional state administrations; data of regional offices of the “ULEAD with Europe” program and other public institutions and organizations, research institutes; own observations, as well as information resources of the world computer network Internet.

Results and discussion

Objects of social infrastructure, their condition and level of provision have a direct impact on the professional and educational level of workers in the agrarian sector, on the level of their labor productivity, ensuring the necessary social and living conditions and the quality of life of the villagers. In the conditions of decentralization transformations, it is important to achieve balanced inter-budgetary relations, to combine the allocation of financial resources from the state budget and funds from local budgets. Moreover, it is necessary to have such amounts of allocations that will provide all the needs for the development of social infrastructure in the village. Yes, it is, first of all, about the creation of ample opportunities to meet people's needs in modern education, medicine, social, communal, administrative and other services. Newly created territorial communities are capable of successfully solving these issues, because it is local self-government bodies that are responsible for school and preschool education, primary health care (polyclinics, health centers), cultural institutions, landscaping, public order and many other pressing issues.

Based on the results of the assessment of the progress of the decentralization reform, it was established that as of January 1, 2022, 17 districts were created in the territory of the Western Polissia of Ukraine (Volyn, Zhytomyr, Rivne and Chernihiv regions), in which 241 rural, township, and city self-government units are located. In the Volyn region, the smallest in terms of population, 4 districts were created and 54 self-governing units were formed; in the largest - Zhytomyr region - there are also 4 districts and 64 regional administrative units (Table 1). It was determined that a significant part of them took advantage of the provided institutional capacity for effective self-governance, despite various obstacles and lack of experience of working in conditions of decentralization.

Table 1 The state of decentralization transformations in the territory of the Western Polissia regions, as of January 1, 2022

Source: generated from data [18].

It is known that the primary and vital need of both the rural and urban population is housing. At the end of 2021, the housing stock of rural settlements in Western Polissia totaled 59,765 thousand m² of total area, which is 1,344 thousand m² (2.3 %) more than in 2017. Residential construction grew at the highest rate during the studied period in Volyn (4.6 %) and Rivne (3.9 %) regions (Table 2).

However, the growth of the housing stock in the studied region is not related to a significant increase in wages, but to the processes of external migration of the rural population of Western Ukraine. Since members of peasant families usually invest the money they earn in housing construction. The results of the conducted research show the positive dynamics of the commissioning of housing in the rural areas of Western Polissia for the period 2017-2021. For example, in the Volyn region, as of January 1, 2022, new residential buildings were built on an area of 181,000 m², which by 100,000 m² (2.2 times) more than in 2017. However, in Zhytomyr and Chernihiv regions, this process is slowed down, even the existing housing stock is not used to the last: part of the buildings are used seasonally, and some are completely empty. We have analyzed the housing stock of the rural areas of the region for the possibility of dependence between the age of housing and the size of rural settlements by the number of inhabitants. The results of the analysis show that in small villages with a permanent population, housing is much older than in large ones.

Table 2 Rural housing fund on the territory of Western Polissia of Ukraine, thousand square meters of total area

Source: calculated from data of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine [19].

The assessment of the housing fund in the rural areas of the region shows that its main drawback is its obsolescence, low level of engineering equipment and provision of communal communications: only 24.3 % of houses have water pipes; 16.4 % - hot water supply; 22.3 % - sewage. All calculated indicators are lower than the average for Ukraine (Table 3).

Table 3 Arrangement of residential buildings with communal communications in rural areas of the Western Polissia of Ukraine, %

The analysis of the housing stock of the rural settlements of the studied region shows that the problem of heating the houses of the villagers remains unsolved. So, for example, 62.7 % of the villagers of Zhytomyr and 59.8 % of Chernihiv regions still use stove heating. The arrangement of residential buildings and apartments with central and individual heating is lower than the average in Ukraine and amounts to 0.3 % and 40.5 percentage points, respectively.

As a result of decentralization transformations in rural areas, the list of services provided by communal enterprises of territorial communities has significantly expanded. Utility services in the village are quite diverse, but among them there are priority ones that the population needs continuously (energy, lighting, water supply, provision of transport and road connections with district centers or cities, etc.). It is worth noting that the development of settlements in the rural areas of Western Polissia has improved in recent years in terms of certain types of services, but the problem of gasification of the rural settlement network remains unresolved, as evidenced by the data in the Table 4.

Table 4 Arrangement of residential buildings in rural areas Western Polissia of Ukraine, %, as of January 1

Source: calculated from data of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine [19].

In recent years, the use of liquefied gas has slightly decreased and the use of natural gas has increased, however, the average indicator of natural gas installation in rural settlements of Western Polissia as of January 1, 2022 was 41.9 %, which is 11.8 percentage points below the national level.

An important component of social infrastructure is the humanitarian sphere, which includes institutions of education, culture, health care, physical education and sports, etc. The conducted research shows that the decrease in the natural growth of the rural population of Western Polissia became one of the reasons for the closure and partial repurposing of a number of preschool educational institutions. Currently, their number has begun to increase somewhat, but it does not meet the existing need. The number of places and the number of children in pre-school institutions in the rural areas of Western Polissia is insufficient, although in recent years the number of children in kindergartens has increased slightly and is 39.5 (for comparison, in the cities of the region - 79.0 %) (Table 5).

Table 5Dynamics of indicators that characterize the development of preschool education in rural areas of Western Polissia, % of coverage

Table 7Development of the network of Centers for the provision of administrative

Source: calculated from the materials [20].

The conducted research shows that the formed united territorial communities of the rural areas of Western Polissia should form the necessary package of effective tools for the development of their own territories, taking into account their natural-climatic, socio-demographic and organizational-production features and the positive results of decentralization for the social sphere. It is socio-ecological-economic balanced development that will allow the implementation of the principles of sustainable rural development, which is generally accepted in developed countries.

Conclusions

It was established that one of the main components of the standard of living of the rural population of Western Polissia, which determines its comfort and is directly related to life activities and social relations, is the social sphere. The monitoring of the current state of the social conditions of the development of the rural areas of the studied region revealed a number of problems and threats related to the planning, formation and distribution of budget funds for the development of education and medicine, maintenance of transport and roads, the creation of new social infrastructure, etc.

The assessment of the social infrastructure of the rural areas of the region indicates the presence of certain problems in its development. At the end of 2021, the housing stock of rural settlements in Western Polissia totaled 59,765 thousand m² of total area, which is 1,344 thousand m² (2.3 %) more than in 2017. Residential construction grew at the highest rate during the studied period in Volyn (4.6 %) and Rivne (3.9 %) regions. However, the main drawback of the rural housing stock of the Western Polissia of Ukraine is its obsolescence, low level of engineering equipment and provision of communal communications: only 23.6 % of houses have water pipes; 15.9 % - hot water supply; 21.7 % - sewage. Thus, 62.7 % of villagers in Zhytomyr and 59.9 % of Chernihiv regions still use stove heating. Indicators of accessibility of the rural population to medical, educational, and household services remain low. The number of places and children in preschool institutions in the rural areas of Western Polissia is insufficient, although in recent years the number of children in such institutions has increased slightly and is 38.5 % (for comparison, in the cities of the region - 78.0 %).

It is worth noting that the Euro-oriented development vector of Ukraine actualizes the issue of decentralization of power as a strategic direction for the functioning of the rural social sphere. We believe that the expansion of financial and legal powers of local self-government bodies of rural areas should be carried out in such a way as to: first, bring the decision-making process as close as possible to citizens and ensure the interests of local residents; secondly, territorial communities must possess organizational, material, financial and human resources sufficient to ensure the necessary volume and quality of services that should be provided to the population in accordance with generally accepted social norms and standards; thirdly, to use an effective organizational and economic mechanism for the use of funds that are planned to be provided for social purposes.

Therefore, in the future, it is advisable to direct further research to the delineation of clear guidelines for the introduction of new and renewal of existing institutions, organizations and institutions of all branches of the sphere of social and household services, engineering communications, the introduction of new modern forms of information, consultation and advisory support for the sustainable development of rural areas.

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