Key Approaches to Identifying and Applying Criteria for Assessing Territorial and Socio-Territorial Inequalities in the Regional Context

The author explains the difference between differentiating features of territories that give them peculiar features, and inequalities, that result in unequal access to benefits and needs for the inhabitants of some territories compared with the inhabitants of other territories. Thus, the author defines socio-territorial inequality as differences in material wealth, access to resources, cultural capital, political opportunities, participation in decision-making, etc., determined by the territorial affiliation of individuals, and consequently related to the inequality of the territories themselves. The author attributes regional socio-territorial inequalities to the residence of an individual in a particular region of Russia, with a certain level of development. The article considers various approaches to identification and assessment of inequalities of territories and as a consequence of socio-territorial inequalities, it is proposed to allocate separate indicators («one-dimensional factors») of territorial characteristics in a group of factors («stratification complexes»): they are defined as belonging to one of the human habitats. Based on the analysis of the data of a representative survey (conducted in 2019–2020 under the guidance of Prof. A.V. Tikhonov with the support of the RNF grant 19-18-00945) using secondary conceptualization, the author demonstrates inequality in 14 regions of Russia in assessing the state of affairs (by 11 indicators) in labour relations, health, education, law, order and security. Using the method of paired correlations (Spearman), the author establishes a link between assessments of the state of affairs in a separate system of vital activity and evaluation of management of work on solving problems in a given system. It thus confirms its assumption that the regional management system is a directional process, the evaluation of which involves the assessment of the very situation in a given area.