Comparison of the Efficiency of Budget Financing and the Social Security of a Region

The article deals with theoretical and economic aspects of the “security” category and draws a distinction between philosophical, sociological, and economic approaches to the concept of social security. From the perspective of a system approach, the authors define the place of the region’s social security in ensuring national security. The article describes the theoretical content of the «social security» category and provides the authors’ specification for such terms as «social risks,» «danger,» and «threat.» The authors offer methodological tools to evaluate the region’s social security based on a complex assessment of the region’s socioeconomic and budget-financing indicators to identify the risks (deviations) and factors of inefficient financing. The proposed methodological approach is based on identifying the dependencies between the social and financial security of the region. The following indicators reflecting the social security level in the territory of residence were selected as estimated indicators: the region’s consolidated budget income and expenses, gross domestic product growth rates, natural population growth ratio, unemployment level, the share of the population with income below the subsistence minimum. This approach was tested by the example of the Perm Territory and Sverdlovsk Region revealing the regularities as well as favorable and unfavorable periods for the region’s social security. The obtained estimated indicators are ranked depending on the growth (fall) time lag, resilience, and sensitivity to budget financing. The assessment results show that the Perm Territory has been entering a deep recession in terms of national security since 2012. Similar tendencies are demonstrated by the Sverdlovsk Region; however, in view of the apparent diversity and dominant influence of the Perm Territory and the Sverdlovsk Region on the socioeconomic development of the Privolzhsky and Ural Federal Districts, respectively, the provided comparison is of scientific and practical interest.The research has been supported by the Grant of the Russian Science Foundation (the Project № 14–18–00574 "Anticrisis Information Analysis System: Diagnostics of Regions, Threat Assessment, and Scenario Forecasting to Maintain and Strengthen the Economic Security and Welfare of Russia")