Formation of Human capital: russian conditions

Abstract

The subject of the study is the peculiarities of the formation of human capital. The purpose of the work is to develop theoretical ideas about human capital and identify the conditions for its formation and use in the Russian economy. Thanks to the analysis of approaches to measuring human capital, it has been established that the policy of forming human capital is determined by the initial standard of living of society, the state of education, science, medicine of the country. At the same time, a high level of human capital development, as well as large investments in it, do not guarantee economic growth, forming only a condition for its provision. It is determined that the standard methods of assessing human capital through the use of the human development index or the amount of investment in a person are very truncated ways of measuring it, inherited from the Western economic tradition. A more capacious and meaningful approach to the assessment of human capital seems to be the use of the doctrine of human potential, which assumes not only an analysis of the income received from investments in a person, as in the case of the application of the doctrine of human capital, but takes into account the potential capabilities of a person in changing conditions, accumulated experience and knowledge, summarily composing the systemic quality of people. In this regard, the idea of human capital looks like some part of the systemic doctrine of “human potential”. However, it has been revealed that the assessment of the human development index (life expectancy, per capita income and level of education) does not allow revealing the full set of advantages of this system doctrine. It is concluded that for the Russian economy, the formation of human capital cannot be considered outside of the task of creating a new fixed capital and activities involving the possession of advanced knowledge.