Конференция «Сучасні тенденції інноваційного розвитку держави в сфері соціально-економічних наук» (13-14 марта 2014г.). Поступившие работы

Bila A. A., Kuznetsova V. D., Shevchenko V. V., Panasyuk I. M.

Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University, Ukraine

COMPARATIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL POLICY OF DENMARK, JAPAN, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND UKRAINE

Social policy is the work of the state and other political and social institutions, which is aimed at progressive social society development, improving conditions of life, giving citizens necessary social support, assistance and protection.

Denmark employment policy, social protection and work motivation are realized through the rights and obligations of the unemployed people. There are two stages of unemployment benefits for Danes. They are the period of maintenance and activation time. During the period of support an unemployed person should find work himself. During the activation period people who didn’t manage to be employed are getting the right to be offered new positions and the obligation to accept these offers. If the unemployed person refuses the offers, he may be imposed certain sanctions, and after the second refuse he loses the right to get unemployment benefits.

As for Japan, the basis of social policy is regional policy. The necessity for additional government intervention in regional development is driven by the purpose of the state, which is an effective use of the production potential of each region in order to increase national welfare. Japan pays considerable attention to human resources. The companies consider the employees as their competitive wealth, which should be developed in order to achieve strategic objectives. Japanese companies try to reach people’s professional growth, professional improvement, strengthening the reputation and image of the company, and reduce the status differences between managers and subordinates, create favorable conditions for work, encourage participation in the development of the company, in public work outside it. This assistance is necessary for daily needs, education, housing, health care, maternity care due to unemployment. Social policy in Japan aims to keep low level of unemployment, job creation, reduction of income differentiation, achievement of the decent standard of living for the elderly. The average span of life in Japan is about 82 years. That’s why older people are important for the labor market and Japan continues to support them in seeking work in the future.

The United States of America is commonly associated with the country in which everybody is used to rely on his own strength, but the state social strategy has a wide range of tasks: determination of the priorities of social policy and mechanisms for their implementation, software framework and principles of government guarantees in the field of labor and social security mechanism for financing social programs, redistribution of income between different population groups, improvement of the organizational and administrative order of the governmental measures, stimulation of the social responsibility, personal responsibility of each citizen to society. There are a lot of measures of social protection in the USA, for example, Pension Insurance, State Health Insurance, State Unemployment Insurance, food and medical care to those who need it, support for education, training, job search, providing benefits to the pensioners, the disabled people, families with children who need help.

As for Ukraine there are a number of social programs. Improving the well-being of the population is planned by employment promotion, economic growth stimulation, improving of the pension system, social support for families, children and the youth, improvement of the mechanism of salaries and medical care. There are a formation of a positive image of the family, schools organization which should help the youth to be prepared for marriage and responsible fatherhood, retraining programs for unemployed people, unemployment payments, which size varies depending on the person’s qualifying period and for the moment they can’t be less than 544 hryvnas and more than 4872 hryvnas.

Thanks to a really good employment policy, unemployment rate in Danmark and Japan was rather low, it was 4–4,4 % in 2013 and it has tendency to declining. Unemloyment rate in the USA and in Ukraine is rather higher than in Japan and Danmark and it was 7–8 % in 2013.