ESTIMATION OF SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE CONDITION IN RURAL SETTLEMENTS AS A FACTOR OF SOCIAL WELL-BEING
The article deals with defining the role of modern Russian village infrastructure in farmers' well-being formation. Based on the statistics and findings of the study, the authors characterize socio-economic conditions of collective and private farms according to several parameters. They include the farms quantity dynamics, cultivated areas, products output, sales problems as well as the number of employees and their labor potential, with the evaluation of various elements of rural settlement' social infrastructure by the workers. The results of the survey demonstrate that sports facilities, leisure centers, health-care facilities, and transport appear the least developed social infrastructure elements. The authors draw a conclusion that the infrastructure underdevelopment, as well as the inability to satisfy the needs of the population, results in the younger generation movement from rural to urban areas. The paper presents the statistics on the respondents' social welfare and its correlation with the evaluation of the rural settlements infrastructure. Among the most important factors of social well-being the authors name the quality of school and pre-school education, healthcare services as well as the opportunities for sportsmanship and leisure. The study analyzes the experts' views, including those of the members of regional department of agriculture and local managing directors, upon the role and prospects of rural area development programs. According to their viewpoints, since the implementation of the national project of agro-industrial development as well as various programs of rural development that followed, the essence of the problems that worried the village residents remained unchanged. The analysis is based on findings of the surveillance study of social and labor sphere, carried out in one of the Povolzhye regions between 2011 and 2013.