SOCIAL VULNERABILITY OF THE POPULATION AND ITS CONCEPTUAL AND TERMINOLOGICAL PROVISION

Abstract

The article is devoted to the development of theoretical and methodological foundations for the study of social vulnerability of the population. The author defines it as a property of a person (group, community), which characterizes the degree of ability to cope with difficult life circumstances in a balance of sensitivity, resilience and flexibility. It includes its ability to perceive, resist, counteract, transform and recover from adverse factors. The essence of such related concepts as: challenge, risk, danger, threat was clarified. Vulnerability begins with the concept of challenge – the urge to act that requires going beyond comfort and achieving something new. Risk is defined as the probable action associated with the loss or reduction of certainty, which can have both positive and negative consequences; situation of uncertainty, possibility of danger or loss. Danger is a potential possibility of destabilizing, destructive influence of a set of factors; it is, in fact, any object, situation or behavior that may cause injury, impair health or harm property or the environment. Threat – external factors that can cause negative and dangerous consequences. It was established that danger and threat are different levels of security-compromising conditions. The conceptual scheme of social vulnerability study through the prism of its basic determinants and destructive factors is developed. Depending on the balance of resilience-sensitivity, a distinction between low, medium and high vulnerability was made. The level of vulnerability depends on both individual socio-demographic characteristics of a person and external factors (geospatial, political, institutional and economic). In addition, one of the most common manifestations of vulnerability – poverty (lack of necessary resources to ensure a satisfactory lifestyle that is acceptable in a particular society and over a period of time) – was analysed. As a result, it became clear that most households in Ukraine are poor (according to subjective estimates). This highlights the need to develop a policy to reduce social vulnerability, which is the prospect of further research on this issue.