The Theoretical Bases for Assessing the Social Security of Regions in the Strategic Period
Authors:   Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics, Iastremska Olena M. 
Published: March 2024

The article is devoted to the disclosure of theoretical bases for assessing the social security of regions, taking into account the specifics of their life activity in the current conditions of the wartime period in Ukraine. The aim of the article is to closer define the theoretical proposals for understanding the content of the concept of «social security» and to assess its level for the regions of Ukraine for making strategic decisions on ensuring social security, taking into account the regional characteristics of its state. The article observes that social security characterizes the ability to resist the influence of negative factors that reduce the social protection of different subjects located in the same territory, in this case – in the region. The main aspects of social security are substantiated as follows: economic, market-labor, socio-infrastructural in relation to health care and education, and ecological, according to which a primary system of partial indicators of its assessment is proposed. The article proves expediency of applying the proposed sequence of stages for assessing the social security of regions, which goes as follows: substantiate the main aspects of assessing the social security of regions by means of methods of systematic and comprehensive analysis, which would take into account the relevant factors influencing its status and directions of strategic development; form by means of the method of analysis and synthesis a system of partial indicators for assessing the social security of regions according to its selected aspects; using the multidimensional factor analysis, clarify the composition of the primary system of partial indicators of social security, identify the most significant of them in terms of factor loads of more than 0.7 and determine the priority aspects for the state and strategic development of social security of regions using the criterion indicator of cumulative variance of the data spread, which should be at least 70%; using the additive convolution method, calculate the integral indicators of social security for each aspect, and combine them into a comprehensive integral indicator of social security by region using the coefficients of significance of partial indicators and aspects; identify the quantitative values of the calculated integral indicators of social security of regions plus the complex integral indicator by qualitative levels specified for the economic conditions of Ukraine by the universal Harrington scale; determine the strategic gaps in ensuring the social security of the regions, the ranking of which from maximum to minimum will allow to substantiate the priority sequence of directions (by aspects) and measures (by values of indicators) of the strategic plan for ensuring the growth of social security of regions, taking into account the specifics of the state of each of them. The practical use of the proposals of the article will ensure the validity of strategic plans for the development of social security at the regional level to improve the quality of life of the population and the cohesion of society in the difficult wartime period.