Public funding of social protection: Impact on social indicators in Eurozone countries

In the context of transition to the sustainable development actually justified and economically balanced managerial decisions are worth to be introduced into activity of the business entities. First of all, it is connected with the formation of the social standards by the Ukrainian government. Establishment of the minimum salary for the employees of the national economic complex of the country is one of the main components of these standards. This indicator influences both the increase of the population’s social welfare provision level and on the economy of the economic entities, including business representatives. Research was conducted in Ukraine. The main trends of the social welfare provision of the business sector entities, including the experience of Hungary and Russia, were analyzed in this article. The main rules of the effective social welfare provision, accounting the necessities of the business environment, were formed. Economical analysis of the retrospective and predictive information about the payroll payment and payment of social contributions was made. The influence of the increase of the minimum salary on the activity of business entities, taking into account raised minimum salary, was analyzed. The regressive model of the payroll budget dependence, accounting minimum salary and social contributions’ level increase, was designed. Obtained calculation results showed high level of tax burden on the business sector entities, so, organization-economic measures of tax burden decrease on the business entities were offered. They took into account minimum salary growth for their employees in the context of the transition to the sustainable development. Recommendations concerning the further scientific researches on the topic of the article were offered.

In spite of the large number of normative and legal documents dealing with gender issues, a problem of ensuring equal rights of men and women does still exist in Ukraine. The article is mainly devoted to the gender inequality of payment for labor. The purpose of the study is to highlight the peculiarities of gender asymmetry of payment for labor, to outline directions for reducing it, and to make proposals on achieving gender equality of payment for labor. The labor market analysis in 2013-2017 showed that gender gap of payment for labor depends on the type of economic activity. The study also found the largest gender-based payment gap in the highest legislative body, the Ukrainian parliament, due to the small number of women in its composition, which in some way affects all social sectors. In conclusion, a number of gender differentiation features in payment for labor were singled out. The authors had proposed ways to overcome the gender gap and suggested appropriate measures to be taken. It is necessary to establish gender quotas in the parliament and to impose fines for their non-compliance, a similar proposal applies to senior positions of state institutions. There is also a need to inform society about the topic under study, to develop programs for women in rural areas, and to introduce indicators of gender inequality in enterprise reporting.

In modern conditions households play an important role in the country's economy. Improving their effective functioning and quality of life of the population is one of the priority tasks of socio-economic development of the country. The set of subjective and objective indicators for determining the level of vital activity of households using an expert method, which based on a collective notebook, is substantiated. The expert group involved leading experts in the field of studying the population’s quality of life, the development of socio-economic and innovative processes; the method of "Snowball" is used for this study. It is proved that peculiarities of activity of households in the conditions of a new economy require the allocation of three system-forming groups of indicators: social, economic, innovation and educational life, the use of which provides a deeper and more comprehensive assessment of households' livelihoods. It is substantiated that in the group of indicators of economic life it is expedient to use two new indicators for households, such as household profitability index and household saving index, which provides a deeper assessment of the index of economic activity of households by expanding their economic opportunities. The distribution of the studied regions of Ukraine according to the level of vital activity of households was carried out using the Harrington scale. To visualize the results of the distribution, the means of “Front-end development” were used and the Illustrative map of Ukraine was built. Recommendations for improving the living standards of households in Ukraine aimed at, first of all, increasing the attention of the state authorities to the socio-economic activity of households are proposed. The methodical approach to the assessment of household living standards is based on the use of the proposed system of indicators consisting of three system-forming groups (social, economic and innovation-educational activities) that are integrated into the integral index (household living standards index) by the taxonomy method.