Socio-economic determinants of sustainable economic development under structural transformation

The article asks what determines whether structural transformation leads to sustainable development or merely shifts resources between industries. The author starts from the premise that socio-economic determinants play a decisive role: human capital, trust and social cohesion, institutional quality, the demographic base, inequality, and the level of social protection. The model describes their influence through three channels (reallocation of labor and capital, technological renewal, and change in the institutional environment) and feedback on the initial base. The model draws on data from the UN, UNDP, the World Bank, and the SDSN; the RDNA5 assessment of Ukraine’s damage and needs; and materials from KSE and VoxUkraine. Ukraine, it turns out, combines high unemployment with labor shortages at most enterprises, has 14% of its housing stock damaged or destroyed, and lives with a statutory subsistence minimum roughly three times lower than the actual one. These gaps are summarized in a table of bottlenecks and policy instruments; a separate figure shows how living conditions, return of people, employment, incomes and social investment form a loop that either reinforces itself or breaks down. The main conclusion is that social parameters are a precondition of recovery, not its by-product; four indicators are proposed for monitoring. Keywords: sustainable development, structural transformation, socio-economic determinants, human capital, social cohesion, inequality, labor market, migration, institutions, post-war recovery, human development index, social standards, Ukraine.