Life Chances and Opportunities in Ukraine : a Subjective Evaluation of Objective Reality

This article examines the state of uncertainty and the large number of social groups with limited vital resource and low status, as the characteristics of the Ukrainian society, which are updated by the attention to adaptation approaches to the analysis of life strategies and the search for the answer to the question: which system of value orientations makes a successful internal and external adaptation to existing conditions and social changes, when the possibility of long-term planning is limited.

Studying life strategies of social actors is important in the situation of ongoing social changes as it demonstrates the reproduction and alteration of institutional, activity, value and normative structures of a society.Life strategy is a dynamic formation and its dynamics is a result of an individual's reaction to changes, first of all, the changes in social and cultural surrounding and the events in the sphere of subculture micro-group.These issues sets out the relevance of this research work.
The state of uncertainty and a large amount of social groups with restricted life resources and a low status as characteristics of Ukrainian society emphasizes adaptation approach to the analysis of life strategies and to the search for an answer to a question: which system of value orientations helps successful inside and outside adaptation to the existing conditions and social changes of the opportunity for long-term planning is restricted.The aim of this article and this analysis will be directed at viewing life strategies in the framework of existing life chances and opportunities and also everyday practices in different life spheres depending on different factors of regional social and cultural surrounding.This will allow us to view the variants of perspective development of a society on the whole and of a definite region in particular.
For this I would like to use data from Human Development Index (HDI) and Happy Planet Index (HPI) to start explain the main study results.
The rating according to the Human Development Index Report (HDIR) 2 is annually composed by the UNO Development Program in the framework of human development reports.The following index presents a comparative analysis of 187 UNO member-states according to a series of indicators of the population's life level.The index is a complex indicator which is composed based on three main dimension of human development:  opportunity to live a long and healthy life characterized by life expectancy planned at birth;  opportunity to get education, measured by average duration of education process and expected duration of education process;  opportunity to maintain worthy life level characterized by the GDP according to parity of buying possibility.
Ukraine's HDI value for 2013 is 0,734, which is in the high human development category, positioning the country at 83 out of 187 countries.Between 1990 and 2013, Ukraine's HDI value increased from 0,705 to 0,734, an increase of 4,1 percent or an average annual increase of about 0,18 percent.
Table 1 reviews Ukraine's progress in each of the HDI indicators: between 1980 and 2013, Ukraine's life expectancy at birth decreased by 0,8 years, mean years of schooling increased by 3,9 years and expected years of schooling increased by 3,1 years.Ukraine's GNI per capita decreased by about 24,2 percent .Then let us turn to the data of the Happy Planet Index -the complex indicator measuring the achievements of the countries of the world and separate regions from the point of view of their opportunity to provide happy life to their citizens3 .The given data show that the fact of being born and living in the given country decreases chances on welfare which is proved by the economic, environmental and medicine criteria used for the rating and also by the results of public opinion polls.

70
An important parameter which determines competitiveness of certain regions in the framework of the country is presented by macroeconomic stability which is a general characteristic of economic climate both in the country and on the given territory.It is necessary to point out that the better the Ukrainian region is developed economically the worse the standard of life there is.This conclusion was made by the UNO experts who prepared the National report of human development in Ukraine and paid special attention to life expectancy and availability of education in the country comparing these showings with the earnings of citizens of different Ukrainian regions.According to their results, the lowest human development index is in Donetsk and Lugansk regions where the level of salaries and at the same time the death rate are the highest in the country which is explained by the high level of ecological pollution and high degree of industrialization.Lets remember that we talk about data from 2012.Situation nowadays changed dramatically.Such negative factors as dangerous working conditions, alcoholism and the high crime rate lead to the fact that the life expectancy in these regions does not exceed 60 years.The results show that practically one fourth of people living in the South-East of the country suffers either from hypertension or form illnesses of cardiovascular system [1].The most favorable regions for life are Zakarpatya, Khmelnytsky and Poltava regions.Besides, the frontier position of Lviv, Zakarpatya and Ivano-Frankivsk regions where the average level of salaries exceeds the life minimum almost twice explains the situation in which «the majority of people live due to the earnings of their relatives working as guest workers who regularly send money form abroad», explains the President of the Center for Social Research «Sofia» Andrey Yermolayev [1].Besides it, the western regions have the lowest death rate in Ukraine.The risk of getting tuberculosis or HIV-infection is low here, according to the data of the UNO experts.
In the same way as the world is divided into more and less developed regions, the majority of countries with considerable territories have certain regional differences: from cultural and ethnical and mental to social and economic ones.As a rule, traditionally there exist less developed regions and so-called pioneers of development offering more chances and opportunities but not always being more favorable for life.
The further analysis will take place without account for regional division of Ukraine with an accent made on general / unique development features of our country as the representative of a special region the Frontier.
Self-estimation of life chances and opportunities: form unequal incomes to consumer status.First of all, I would like to note that I'm not going to analyze situation nowadays.Analysis concerns the situation before war conflict situation in Ukraine (me and my colleagues made a very detailed analysis of this issue in [2]).
It is recognized that the problem of unequal incomes in the majority of post-Soviet countries is acute.The researchers mark1 that Ukraine experiences a disastrous situation of poor families with children.Families with children have a twice higher showing of poverty than childless families.The risk category includes young people who start to form families with children.The most favorable period from the point of view of quality of life for Ukrainian men and women is the period between 45 and 65 years.In this period the risk of poverty is minimal which is explained by the fact that by this time children already grow up and start earning their living themselves and also people acquire pension incomes2 .
For studying self-estimation of life chances and opportunities of people the data of the project «Eurasian monitor» (regular -once in 6 months -synchronized polls according to the general questionnaire) will be used.In every participating country the polls are conducted according to the national representative sample (1100-2000 people)3 .The conception of the project continues and develops the ideas of «Eurobarometer» -a current research program of the European Union and other analogical projects which are realized in different parts of the world («Afrobarometer», «Latinobarometer», etc.) The research Eurasian monitor 2012-2013 was conducted in 11 post-Soviet countries which followed (and are still following) the line of transformation changes.We deliberately left the given data on all the countries in order to show how the Ukrainian society stands out of the whole situation.The self-estimation of material state of family and the estimation of the economic position of the country are low in the given region and can be compared only to Moldova (see Figure 1).
Economists estimate the incomes of people and their financial reserves and sociologists study opinions and moods of citizens trying to understand their opportunities and life chances according to their selfestimations, which explains our turning not only to estimations of incomes but also expenses of people and their consumer possibilities.
As a result of the poll of 2001 according to the international program «Life conditions, life style and health»1 (LLH) it was found out that in the given countries it considerably varied (see table 4) and according to the data of the Eurasian monitor 2012-2013 the gap shortened.This situation repeats also in studying the dynamics of the social adaptation level and social optimism level.A more detailed picture of this situation on these issues and its casual character are presented in the previous parts that is why there is no need to stop here.We will mark only certain general tendencies.In Ukraine social desadaptation prevails.According to the monitoring data, Ukraine entered the group of countries where since 2009 -the peak of the world economic crisis -the social adaptation level considerably increased.One of possible explanation is in the fact that low trade turnover with Europe and its high intensity with Russia (approximately half of external turnover is directed to Russia) let them feel the crisis of 2008-2009 in a less acute way than Europe.
According to the social optimism level there exists a marked differentiation among the countries which took part in Eurasian monitor.In Ukraine the prevailing opinion is «we will still live in the way we are living now».
The aim at finding the dynamics of material state of families in the researched countries allowed to mark definite differentiations between Ukraine and other countries which were already mentioned (table 5).For the markers of 2010 the database of the research project «Health in Times of Transition.Trends in Population Health and Health Policies in CIS Countries»1 was used, and this project was a continuation of the research program begun in 2000-2003 with the project «Life conditions, life style and health» (LLH).This allows us to compare the data in this time framework using these two databases.The character and level of these differentiations considerably increases when we speak about the satisfaction with the system of social security of citizens in the modern post-Soviet states.The level of satisfaction with social security among the population of Ukraine since the 2000s has become not high compare to other countries.This tendency remains topical (table 6).
The same differentiation according to the level of satisfaction and dissatisfaction among the population of the studied countries can be also observed according to such an important parameter of life quality as the type and character of professional employment.According to the most important parameters of life quality the level of satisfaction of Ukrainian population considerably exceeds the same markers in other post-Soviet countries (the research of HITT (2010) was conducted in nine post-Soviet countries).The results of Eurasian monitor (EM) as for the changes connected with the results after the world crisis of 2008 demonstrate the deterioration of the situation.The differentiation of the restrictions level of in consuming other types of material and social welfares also remained rather considerable.The amount of those who has to always restrict him/herself in food products in Ukraine has shortened almost three times in 2001-2010, in clothes and shoes -from 44 to 17 %, in medical care -twice.So, taking into account the studied above self-estimations of welfare made by respondents we can speak about the improvement of economic component of life quality of Ukrainian population before war conflict: the citizens began to give higher estimations to their welfare, they less often have to restrict themselves in the necessary goods and services though the amount of those who find themselves in rather difficult position still reaches half of the population (there were two thirds of them in 2001).
Despite the marked improvement of self-estimations we still do not speak of the high level of consuming and material welfare as a national specificity of Ukrainian life.Often we speak only of adequate reproduction of biological status.
The influence of social capital on forming and reproduction of life chances and opportunities: frontier entity of staying in «mainstream».While analyzing life strategies apart from the existing life chances and opportunities we should also take into account social capital which can be converted and used to replace economic resources.That is why the next step will lie in analyzing the essence and structure of social capital of Ukrainian families.
We can speak of social ties as a capital only when the character and amount of social resources which we interpret as connections, contacts, and relations allow people possessing them to fulfill increasing social mobility and improve the level of their welfare.Increasing social mobility can be viewed as one of the main showings of equal possibilities.
The social capital of Ukrainian citizens in the conditions of the Frontier in many aspects will be viewed in two following directions: -as an ability to stay in «mainstream» when the majority of respondents show the feeling of being included into the wide system of interpersonal and interfamily contacts and attitudes -possesses a developed social resource; the indicators of being in «mainstream» a represented by the ability to communicate, being sure of potential support from the nearest people in case of necessity, the state of psychological comfortwithout the feeling of loneliness; -as a system of important ties interpreted as deficit types of social connections which can be used for solving life problems and broadening life chances -as a capital.
The importance of family as a value was marked in the part about life values (we demonstrated the importance of group of values which can be theoretically oriented on safety -health, family, material welfare, children -they are admitted as very important by more than 80 % of Ukrainian population).The importance of being in «mainstream» is supported by the statement that in the conditions of acute social crisis a connecting social solidarity fulfills the function of a «safety belt»: in dangerous situations the solidarity of family and friends brings a necessary support for an individual.9,8 % people in Ukraine get material support from parents, relatives, friends living in the country but not together with the respondents, and only 2,4 % get assistance from their nearest surrounding living abroad.
According to the research EVS 2008 more than two thirds of population found themselves in «mainstream», i.e. lived with the feeling of satisfaction with the intensity of their social contacts.Only one fifth of respondents stated that they did not manage to find loyal friends, every tenth person considered his communication abilities to be bad; accordingly they faced such problems as absence of communication with relatives and loneliness (11 % in Ukraine).
As we can see from the data only every tenth person in the studied country informed about the assistance of relatives and friends in the structure of family's incomes though it is clear that such assistance is more widespread.The thing is that mutual exchange of resources and services among relatives, friends and colleagues became a restricted component of survival strategies and can be overlooked, taken for granted, being a usual component of daily life and daily interrelations.The marker of intensity of social contacts including communicating with close relatives also turned out to be rather high in Ukraine (table10).The average marker of communication frequency is «several times a month», which shows a rather high level of social communication in Ukraine.
The intensity of social communication with friends turned out to be a bit higher than with close surrounding.This allows us to come to a conclusion that many people communicate with their neighbors more often than with their friends and even close relatives.This forms the image of social communication structure in the Ukraine which is characterized by high intensity of social contacts according to the place of living usually without any regard for relative ties.
Due to the intensity of social contacts people seldom feel lonely as it has already been stated above.But still the data of HITT-CIS for the year 2010 show that approximately one fourth of respondents has felt lonely lately.
Functional characteristics of social ties are quite varied -this is material, resource, instrument, information and psychological support.The latter it lies in ensuring being sure of having certain back.Further we discuss the examples of possible psychological and material support possessed by respondents (every next type of assistance can include also simpler its types and can also absorb and broaden it) (table 11).It is worth marking that in all countries the markers of possible support from the outer surrounding are high: the difference between Ukraine and another countries mostly does not exceed the statistical mistake of the sample.
The gap in approach to social net resources becomes topical while comparing the possibilities of getting different types of assistance to the poor, the neediest layers of population and the possibilities of those who find themselves in higher layers of population.Approximately a half of the poor and only every fourth representative of higher layers do not get assistance from the side of their relatives and friends.
The proof of specifics of social ties functioning which are considerably differentiated depending on the level of respondents' welfare is given further.We can see the difference almost of 10 % in every parameter (see table 12).
It is important to understand on the territorial and economic area of the studied country we should pay special attention not only to interregional differentiation of chances, opportunities, conditions and quality of life which is extremely important bur also to the social and cultural context determining the steady ways of interrelations and influencing traditional social practices.So, in the analysis of support ties as for the level of urbanization (villages, towns, cities) we can come to a conclusion that such ties are more active in the places of intensification of social contacts and economic growth (in more developed and populated places).More developed regions the part of citizens in informal social exchanges is higher than in other places.We should also mark such tendency (observed in Ukraine in 1998-2013) as a slight but still existing decrease in intensity of contacts (including the close surrounding) in increasing instability and the decrease of life quality of the majority of population.Emotional and psychological health and understanding of control over one's own life in unstable conditions.According to the data of the Eurasian monitor there is a marked difference in answers to the question «Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the life you lead?».The amount of positive and negative answers of respondents is the following: 32 % of satisfied in Ukraine versus 64 % of dissatisfied people (2009).The difference in more than 30 %, which is almost one third of population, is definitely considerable.We should also take into account the fact that being satisfied with one's life is an indicator characterizing more social and psychological condition of certain groups and layers of the studied societies which is not always directly connected with the life level of the population.Nevertheless, the data characterizing the material position in the studied country show that there exist a rather high level of correlation between the estimation of such position and being satisfied with life.
An important marker of social feeling is physical and psychic health of the population.It considerably determines the possibility of realizing life strategies of an individual.Healthy people are more active in overcoming difficulties, sick people are more passive, they have lower self-esteem, stronger feeling of lack of their competitiveness, less determination and optimism, ability to preserve and restore physical and psychic strength.The data given below show that every fifth citizen of Ukraine admits inability to overcome the existing difficulties and almost a half are exhausted.Naturally, this influences life on the whole and is accompanied by depressions, stresses and illnesses.
It is important that the majority of Ukrainians always feel safe at day-and nighttime in their intimate surrounding.We can mark that the amount of respondents who do not feel safe (in the afternoon or at night) did not exceed several per cent which is a rather high marker of safe feeling in the conditions of direct life sphere.But we remember that it was a situation before war conflict.This factor will show exactly different results nowadays.
One of the components of dissatisfaction of population with their own life and life conditions on the whole is insecurity of the future and, as a result, absence of life strategies for a more far perspective, absence of feeling of control over the current events.This is proved by the sociological research of O. Yaremenko Ukrainian Institute of social researches conducted together with the department of monitoring research of social and economic transformations of the Institute of economy and forecasting of Ukrainian NAS.The researchers asked a question: «Which term can you plan the future of your family and your personal future for?»«More than for 10 years» was the answer given by 0,8 %, «6-10 years» was given by 1,2 %, 4 % answered «3-5 years», 18 % answered «1-2 years», 36 % gave an answer «the nearest months», 31 % gave an answer «for nearest weeks».9 % had difficulties in answering.So, three fourths of Ukrainian population lives for the day.The question «How do you estimate you future if compared with how you estimated it a year ago?» was answered by respondents in the following way: -the future is much better if compared with the previous year -4 %; -probably better than last year -25,5 %; -probably worse than last year -45 %; -the future seems to be much worse than a year ago -13,5 %; -had difficulties in answering -12 %.Besides these negative tendencies every tenth person cannot imagine and estimate the existing perspective.The same tendencies can be observed in the analysis of Institute of Sociology of Ukrainian NAS «Ukrainian Society: 20 years of independence.Sociological Monitoring»: since 1999 hope for the better was characteristic for the majority of people but a decrease could be observed and in 2011 anxiety strengthened and only half of respondents still had hope though the amount of those anxious increased.
Such pessimistic estimations are represented also by the research HITT-CIS (table 13).According to these results Ukrainian respondents had more optimism but only half of them feel that they control their life and one third of people feel that they are treated unfairly.In the end I would like to make a conclusion that Ukraine do not enter either the Western or the Eastern cultural areal fully -it is frontier country which are characterized by intermediate or transitive cultural integrity where two types of public reproduction interact.These two types are represented to the minimal extent by intensive type with the prevailing role of innovative and personal basis and the extensive type where communal values dominate and paternalist tendencies can be found.
During the last two decades it turned out possible to shorten the amount of people who live in extreme poverty but the considerable amount of frontier citizens are still on the border of poverty and social marginalization which results in a stressful situation of emotional and psychological condition leading to inability and unwillingness to build long-term life strategies.Objective conditions of living (life level) and specificities of institutional structure strongly connected with informal and shadow relations in which the majority of population cannot exist and function if they do not have enough resources for this lead to the increase of regulations and declared readiness for different kinds of protest actions.But passive life strategies should also be taken into account: we can recollect, for example, Ukrainian protests -abrupt social explosion is replaced with sudden apathy towards the events taking place which allows the authorities to calm down dissatisfaction in the society with minimal effort.
The only possible way to live more or less successfully lies in mass being included into informal ties of support and the significance of this life component is only increasing.During the last decade the amount of practically all types of received assistance became higher which proves the activization of using social capital by the population in its different variants: from simple help (support in everyday life and emotional and psychological assistance), resource assistance (help in natural resources -clothes, food products and money) to instrumental support (providing services) and possessing connections, suggesting exchange of protections, recommendations, information, etc.The last two types of support refer to the active usage of social capital of ties in which respondents are included (these are help in employment, studying, mediation in approach to officials) and are available to the minority of population.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Comparing the Self-estimation of Material State of Family and the Estimation of the Economic Position of the Country, Eurasian Monitor, 2012-2013 (%)

Table 2 The Main Components of the Happy Planet Index in 2012 Rang (out of 151 countries) Country Life Expectancy
Data source: http://www.happyplanetindex.org/data/

Table 7 Which Sides of the Crisis Have You Faced During the Current Six Months? (EM, 2009, %)
It is important that because of crisis Ukrainians began to save on the most necessary things: most probably, before crisis they had money for clothes, shoes and food products.