Life opportunities of people: conceptual approaches and measurement

The article is devoted to the issues of poverty, social inequality and life opportunities (chances) of individuals. Qualitative and quantitative methods of assessing life opportunities are used to analyze the effectiveness of social policy, allowing identification of the real opportunities to achieve certain levels of material well-being and quality of life for the most typical groups of the population in terms of income, education, duration of employment in professional groups. This provides a more accurate analysis of the opportunities to achieve a higher level of education, social status, access to quality medical care, reliable insurance institutions. Accessibility of knowledge, social services, employment, social networks to individuals, reflects not only their potential that can be realized in the future, but also describes the current situation: uneven distribution of resources generating poverty, social disunity. The article proposes to consider the triad of issues "poverty - social inequality - life opportunities" in a single context, which is a new methodological tool for development of social policy of the State. To eliminate the institutional gap in the social sphere in Russia, it is necessary to improve the quality of budget management, which is possible only with an integrated approach that allows the use of effective mechanisms, institutions and forms of interaction between the business community and the State. In this regard, it seems most appropriate to focus on the further development of such management mechanisms as results-based budgeting; program-targeted methods of implementing budget policy; public-private partnership in the field of financing social services to the population; actuarial methods in the pension and health insurance system.