Rostovskaya T.K. et al. Assessment of the social wellbeing of families in Russian regions: A sociological analysis. RUDN Journal of Sociology, 2021, 21 (4), 805–824.

Abstract

Under the current humanitarian and technological revolution, the change of the paradigm of the social-economic development from the principle ‘man for economy’ to the principle ‘economy for man’ has become a priority criteria for positioning countries in the global space. The term ‘quality of life’ plays the key role in this concept, since the high quality of life allows the state to accumulate on its territory the main resource — human capital. Improving the quality of life takes a leading place among the Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) approved by the UN General Assembly [19]. The 2020 Human Development Report underlines “the meaning of a good life and the ways in which we can achieve it,” and the emphasis is made on “achieving the well-being of everyone” [10]. The article is based on the data of the authors’ representative sociological survey on “Demographic well-being of Russian regions” conducted in 2020. The survey aimed at revealing the assessments of respondents from different regions of Russia of the metrics of family well-being, and at identifying family problems for the development of differentiated/narrowly focused measures to support families with children. Based on the survey data, the authors conducted a detailed analysis of the parameters of family well-being and of the role of the state social support in ensuring it in the respondents’ perspective. Russian families differ in their assessments of the significance of measures necessary to support the family, focus on measures of economic support, on the development of social infrastructure, and on the role of ideological influence. The cluster analysis confirmed the need for differentiated measures of the state social support, which would take into account the stages of the family life cycle (age of family members, number of children). The factor analysis allowed to identify the structure of Russians’ ideas about the main measures that would contribute to strengthening the family, which must be taken into account when developing managerial decisions in the field of the social-demographic development.