Development of the sphere of life support of the population in the regions

Among the branches of the social sphere related to the satisfaction of the daily vital needs of the population are housing and communal services, the sphere of consumer services, as well as a set of households located in the territory of the analyzed region. In this regard, the State should pay close attention to the management of these areas of activity, since they not only determine the magnitude of the social and economic potential of each particular region, but also, by and large, contribute to the solution of the main task of the functioning of any socio-economic system, which is to meet the needs of the person and ensure his harmonious development.

Housing and communal services (HCS) of the region is a complex complex of various enterprises, services, as instilled, interconnected with each other, providing services or producing products. It consists of two sub-sectors: housing and communal services, with housing represented by housing construction and housing maintenance services. In turn, the structure of the communal services includes:

sanitary services and enterprises (water supply, sewerage, municipal cleaning and sanitation); energy economy (gas and electricity supply, cogeneration services); external improvement facilities (road and bridge construction, landscaping service, lighting service); transport facilities.

The close interconnection and interdependence of all sub-sectors of housing and communal services necessitates proportionality in their development, an integrated approach to solving issues of functioning and management. An important role in this belongs to the territorial bodies that directly manage the housing and communal services system, which is mainly communal and private property, through the relevant sectoral departments and departments. In their activities, the regional departments of communal services are subordinate to both the executive committees of local Councils and the bodies of republican state administration (the Ministry of Housing and Communal Services of the Republic of Belarus), which ensures a combination of sectoral and territorial management principles, taking into account local conditions.

Special bodies have been created to manage the development of individual sub-sectors of housing and communal services. For example, the technical maintenance of housing in Minsk is carried out by the Main Production Department of Housing, which includes: district housing and repair operational associations (WREO); specialized transport enterprises for sanitary cleaning of the city; urban television and information networks; Bureau of Registration and Technical Inventory (BRTI), etc.

Water supply and sanitation of the city is provided by the Minsk City Production Association of Water Management (PA “Minskvodokanal”), which includes the management of “Minskvodoprovod”, the department of operation of the Vileika-Minsk water system and some other facilities. The wastewater disposal system includes over 1220 km of sewerage networks,
37 wastewater pumping stations, Minsk aeration station. Provision of residential buildings with heat and hot water, operation and repair of quarterly heating networks and local boiler houses is carried out by Minskkommunteploset.

The main conceptual provisions of the housing policy and the development of housing and communal services are defined in the National Housing Program, which provides for the organization and development of the housing market, changing the structure of the housing stock in the direction of increasing the private sector, improving the quality of housing. The state program for the modernization and thermal rehabilitation of residential buildings has been developed and adopted for implementation in the country, and in the regions – projects of the “Housing” program, which contain subprograms “Construction of social housing”, “State support for the construction of individual housing”, “Construction of housing in the countryside”.

In general, the formation of a new economic mechanism and housing and communal services management system is associated with the implementation of:

legislative and legal frameworks, which include contractual and contractual forms of relations in the industry; organizational and managerial measures aimed at changing the ratio of centralization and decentralization of housing and communal services management, the emergence of commercial structures, restructuring the industry; economic approaches related to the choice of economic methods of management, changes in subsidy criteria, incentive system, pricing, etc .; financial measures involving the freedom to choose the mechanism of financial and resource security, preferential taxation, lending, etc.

Household services, or household services, are a socially organized form of satisfying certain individual human needs for household services. According to the existing classification, household services provided to the population are divided into:

industrial (production), related to the sewing and repair of shoes, sewing, fur and leather products, repair of metal products and household appliances, dry cleaning and dyeing, etc .; non-industrial (non-production), due to the provision of rental services, laundries, photo studios, baths, hairdressers and other services not related to the creation of material values.

The specificity of household enterprises is due to the fact that their work has a pronounced local character. In addition, their functioning is associated with the individual nature of the services they provide, as well as with the unevenness in time (seasonality) of the latter. In addition, household services, as a rule, are not interchangeable.

The development of public forms of service makes it possible to facilitate and reduce labor costs in the household, to increase the free time of the population. At the same time, the solution of the problem of freeing the population from low-productivity domestic labor and more fully satisfying their domestic needs is possible in two directions:

1) on the basis of mechanization of certain types of domestic labor by means of mass introduction of electrical household machines and devices into everyday life;

2) by creating the most effective and complete range of services by consumer service enterprises.

It should be borne in mind that the expansion of the use of household appliances in the household, in turn, requires the development of household services for their repair. The choice between the two above directions is based on the fact that when using public forms of services, the time for domestic work is reduced by 6 times, and with the mechanization of the household – only by 2 times. Consequently, the main way to reduce unproductive domestic labor is associated with the development of household services, which will ultimately have a positive impact on the socio-economic development of the region.

Regulation of consumer services, involving forecasting and planning the development of this sphere, is primarily associated with the analysis of the state of the consumer services system in the region.

Characteristics of the development of the household service are given by such indicators as:

the total volume of sales of services to the population; revenue for household services accounted for as part of retail turnover; introduction of advanced technology, mechanization and automation of production processes; commissioning of production facilities for the main types of household services.

In parallel, evaluation is being carried out in other areas of activity, including specific types of services: shoe repair; repair and sewing of sewing, fur and leather products; repair of household appliances; repair and maintenance of vehicles of individual owners; manufacture and repair of furniture; dry cleaning and dyeing of clothes; housing repair and construction; at the same time, the volume of household services per capita is taken as the main indicator characterizing the level of development of consumer services of the population. It allows us to assess the satisfaction of the effective demand of the population, the differences in the level of service of the rural population in comparison with the urban one, to compare the development of the household service in different territories and to determine the prospects and directions for its development in the regions.

An important tool for regulating the development of consumer services is its forecasting and planning, which involves the active use of such methods as:

normative, based on the use of rational norms of consumption of household services per capita; economic and mathematical modeling, which is based on research on the influence on the formation of demand for household services of such factors as the demographic composition of the population, the level of consumption and durability of durable items, the degree of satisfaction of the population’s demand for certain types of services, etc .; the method of correlation, which involves taking into account the dependence (through elasticity coefficients) of the population’s costs for household services on changes in the volume of their supply, price, etc.

In the theory of a market-oriented economic system, exceptional importance is given to the economic category “household”, which is interpreted as an economic unit consisting of one or more persons, united by a common budget and place of residence, which supplies the economy with resources and uses the money received for them to purchase goods and services that satisfy the material needs of a person. The household encompasses all types of labor, production, economic and social activity, uniting consumers, employees, owners of large and small capitals, land, means of production, persons employed and not engaged in social production. It is necessary to point out that if in the socio-demographic theory the household is, first of all, a universal accounting and statistical unit (family), then in economic research it is a special type of economy, a primary economic system, the activity of which is of great importance for the economy as a whole.

Household income can be considered in the following aspects:

the income derived by the household itself from the products and services produced by its members; external income, which represents all external earnings and cash receipts; total income, combining its two previous types.

All the diversity of households is usually classified according to geographical, demographic, socio-economic characteristics, including:

territorial-regional affiliation (type of region, location, etc.); demographic state (family composition, age, etc.); the level of profitability (per capita income, sources of income, etc.); property potential (nature of housing, availability of other property); social status (employment of household members, sphere of activity, etc.); labor potential (the number of able-bodied people in the household, the level of education and qualifications of its members, etc.).

The study of the state of households in the regions is carried out on the basis of the sampling method, when, instead of the general (general) population, the characteristics of its part are studied – the sample, as well as through interviews and other types of sociological research. The Ministry of Statistics and Analysis of the Republic of Belarus prepares quarterly and annual reports on the basis of surveys containing an extensive description of the state of households in the regions and the country as a whole on the basis of statistically taken indicators.

The most important in the system of indicators characterizing the well-being of households are:

cash income, including all types of money inflows into the household (wages, pensions, scholarships, proceeds from the sale, dividends, etc.); monetary expenditure, which is the expenditure of cash by households on personal consumption, productive activities and savings. Part of it is the expenditure on the purchase of goods and services, called consumer spending; available resources, which are household funds and the value of consumed food products obtained from personal subsidiary farming, minus the material costs of production.

By the beginning of 2000, there were 3.6 million households in the regions of the Republic of Belarus. Their average size was 2.7 people, in addition, there is a tendency to increase the number of small households due to a decrease in the birth rate and the number of large families. Other negative information is related to the relatively low standard of living of the country’s population, since a significant part of households has per capita disposable resources below the subsistence minimum: on average in the Brest region there are 44.4% of such households; Vitebs-
42.9%; Grodno – 36.0%; Gomel – 39.1%; Mogilevskaya – 41.0%. In this regard, the task set by the President of the Republic of Belarus to steadily increase the average level of wages in the country is very, very relevant.
(up to 250 USD/person in 2005), which indicates the awareness of the importance of this problem by the country’s leadership and the recognition of the importance of the role of households in the country’s economy.