Human capital accumulation  

Growing social obligations, as well as the dependence of economic and social progress on scientific knowledge, the accumulation of human capital, and the level of development of infrastructure sectors, led to a constant increase in government spending on a wide range of services, primarily science, education, health care, social services and welfare. In the 60-70s, the impact of the state on services increased manifold due to the strengthening of its economic functions and the increase in budgetary expenditures on education, health care and other social goals in the context of the concept and programs of the welfare state. In the United States, for example, from 1955 to 1970, the share of education and health care in total budget expenditures increased from 14.5 to 20.8%.  

The current stage of world scientific, technical and socio-economic development is characterized by a radical change in the role and importance of the human factor in the economy and society. Human capital is becoming the most important factor in economic growth. According to some estimates, in developed countries, increasing the duration of education by one year leads to an increase in GDP by 5-15%. The return on investment in education is even higher in developing countries. An unprecedented leap in the industrial development of the countries of Southeast Asia was made possible thanks to the high rate of accumulation of human capital based on the development of universal education.  

But in addition to quantitative characteristics, an equally important role is played by the quality of labor, and, accordingly, labor costs. A more educated and skilled workforce is more productive, leading to higher levels and rates of economic growth. Labor costs can expand without any increase in working hours and the number of employees, only by improving the quality of the workforce, level of education, qualifications, etc. This process is often called the process of accumulation of human capital and plays a particularly important role in modern conditions (Table .20).  

The model considered is purely theoretical - in the real economy, both output and labor productivity generally increase. However, the above model formulates some general conditions for equilibrium economic growth. The point is that such growth should not be achieved through an increase in the capital-labor ratio, but only through scientific and technological progress, economies of scale in production and the accumulation of human capital, i.e. knowledge and experience.  

ACCUMULATION OF HUMAN CAPITAL  

The valuation of the accumulation of human capital in terms of education - knowledge, skills, experience - can be expressed in the “education fund” or in unit costs of education. The cost of education in primary, secondary schools, technical schools and universities varies significantly. So, for example, in the USSR in 1980, costs per student in these educational institutions were equal to 600 rubles in primary school, 700 rubles in secondary school, 980 rubles in technical school, 1180 rubles in college, and 1450 rubles in university. per year. In the USA, these indicators correlate as 1 1.6 1.9 3.1.  

Certain problems of human capital accumulation are discussed to varying degrees in this textbook in chapters on the labor market, income distribution (wages), the use of limited resources, theories of economic growth, as well as a number of others.  

For example, in industrialized countries, the accumulation of human capital at the end of the 20th century. 3-4 times higher than the accumulation of capital in material form, expenses for the construction of new museums, libraries, theaters, and sports facilities increased significantly.  

The authors of new studies propose slightly different, expanded conditions of the models compared to the basic ones. If in the latter technical progress was the only long-term factor of economic growth, then in the models derived from them such long-term growth factors are considered as the savings rate, labor force growth rate, the level of investment in human capital and a new category for us - the rate of accumulation of human capital, . Recall that in the standard Solow model discussed in Chapter 4, the saving rate did not affect the long-term growth rate.  

Observability 215 Imposition of knowledge Reliability 105 Name 194 Brand names 154 Accumulation of human capital Taxes 32 Value added 34  

B. Micro 2 changes in household behavior, labor markets, human capital accumulation and distribution of income and property in Russia during the transition period.  

Let's start with an analysis of the economics of investing in higher education and, based on the results of this analysis, consider the functioning of the labor market with higher education. Then we will consider the role of industrial training in the process of human capital accumulation and conclude the material with a discussion of human capital in the arts and professional sports.  

The main link in the formation and accumulation of human capital.  

Worker salaries vary for many reasons. Wage differences compensate workers to some extent for the characteristics of the job. All other things being equal, difficult work in difficult conditions is paid higher than easy and pleasant work. Workers with high human capital receive higher wages. The return on accumulated human capital is high and has only been increasing in recent decades.  

The hypothesis of uneradicated patriarchy. In families with higher levels of education and accumulated human capital, the distribution of market and household labor loads is more equal. Families with a lower level  

N and Ry = d + v + g0 + g1y-. Equations of equilibrium dynamics (3.7)-(3.12) are essentially similar to those obtained above for the case of autarky. Equation (3.12) follows from the market equilibrium conditions (3.6) for the distribution of capital, /cy = ayy/r, and it explicitly reflects the relationships between national economies. According to (3.12), the average financial position, weighted by countries' shares of world output, is equal to one. Output shares (pk) are determined based on the equations of human capital accumulation (3.3).  

One of the serious shortcomings of reform programs in post-socialist states and the first steps towards their implementation is the underestimation of the importance of activation and development of human resources, strengthening work motivation, which aggravates the decline in production, leads to a decrease in labor productivity, waste and depreciation of accumulated human capital, and even greater dehumanization of labor relations. This is evidenced by both general economic indicators (declining production, rising unemployment, reduction of the vocational training system, etc.) and the situation at enterprises.  

In the last decade, a number of qualitatively new theoretical models have been published, in which an attempt has been made to substantiate the endogenous (i.e., inherent in the system itself) nature of technological changes that induce growth. The peculiarity of these models lies in a new variable - human capital, which characterizes the amount of scientific knowledge and practical experience accumulated in the process of training and direct production activities.  

After World War II, conditions were created in developed and then in some developing countries for the massive release of relatively cheap consumer goods and services onto the market. All this actually led to a noticeable increase in the standard of living, the creation of objective conditions for a greater social orientation of the economy - one of the main factors of sustainable economic development. As a result, for most families in developed and some developing countries, the share of costs for medicine and education in their expenditure structures increased, i.e. in the accumulation of human capital. Considering the role of the social factor in global economic development  

Further development

The wealth of any country is its people. In the future, the country's economic growth is possible from increasing funding for such areas of the economy as the quality of the workforce, human capital, healthcare, culture and infrastructure. The development of human material, intellectual and spiritual capabilities, the accumulation of human capital becomes an important task of the state. The main priority of the country's budget expenditures is investment in human capital, and such expenditures are education, health care and culture.

The greater potential each member of society has, the higher the intellectual resource of the entire country, the more dynamic the rate of economic growth, the greater the opportunities of society. The development of human potential in Russia involves:

Creating favorable conditions for the development of the abilities of each person, improving the living conditions of Russian citizens and the quality of the social environment;
- increasing the competitiveness of human capital and the social sectors of the economy that support it.

Economic growth currently depends on the degree of formation of human capital, which is the process of expanding the knowledge, skills and capabilities of the people of a country.

Human capital refers to the knowledge and skills embodied in a person, which play an important role in determining labor productivity and the ability to absorb new knowledge and master new technologies and innovations.

The formation of human capital takes various types, forms and passes through various stages of the human life cycle. The factors on which the formation of human capital depends can be combined into the following groups: socio-demographic, institutional, integration, socio-mental, environmental, economic, production, demographic, socio-economic. The institutional environment necessary for an innovative socially oriented type of development in the long term is formed as a result of the development of human capital, and above all: education, healthcare, the pension system and housing. In order to ensure the implementation of the functions of financial markets in terms of the formation of human capital in Russia, the following is provided:

Increasing the affordability of housing for citizens through mortgage mechanisms, promoting the use of financial instruments to stimulate the development of the housing market as a whole;
- increasing information transparency and openness of the consumer lending market;
- expanding opportunities for citizens to use educational loans;
- assistance in increasing the level of protection of the quality of life and personal well-being of citizens through life and property insurance;
- promoting the development of additional pension insurance mechanisms.

The conceptual model of the formation of human capital in the socio-economic system at various levels of its development: society, region, enterprise is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 – Concept of the human capital formation model

The formation of human capital is a continuous ongoing process through which an individual achieves his highest potential and strives to integrate and optimize the combination of ongoing processes such as education, job search, employment, skills formation and personality development. Thus, the formation of human capital is associated with investments in people and their development as a creative and productive resource.

The formation of human capital is a long process of increasing the productive qualities of the workforce, ensuring a high level of education and improving skills. Human capital formation is critical to a country's long-term economic growth and provides the same benefits of new innovative technologies and more efficient industrial equipment. The interaction of people with each other influences the dissemination of knowledge in society. The transfer of knowledge in itself is not a value.

The process of human capital formation takes time (15 – 25 years) and often results in a higher standard of living for people within a country over several generations. The formation of human capital can be achieved through the use of government policies in the fields of health, education, culture and professional training.

The leading role in the formation of human capital that creates the knowledge economy is given to the cultural sector, which is due to the following circumstances:

The transition to an innovative type of economic development requires increasing professional requirements for personnel, including the level of intellectual and cultural development, which is possible only in a cultural environment that allows one to understand the goals and moral guidelines for the development of society;
- as the personality develops, the needs for its cultural and creative self-expression and the development of cultural and spiritual values ​​accumulated by society grow. The need to satisfy these needs, in turn, stimulates the development of the market for cultural services.

Thus, society is critical to the formation of human capital.

Each generation forms its human capital from scratch. The formation of human capital begins before the birth of a child, when parents, through their behavior and decisions, determined the outcome of the child’s birth. A person from birth is endowed with unskilled labor, which does not require training and can be supplied to the labor market. An individual’s human capital is formed from childhood and is considered formed at the age of 23–25 years.

Every child aged 3–4 years develops a culture of completely free access to any information. The development of a child’s abilities gives him the opportunity to freely manage his talents, to put as many concepts, skills, and abilities into his toolkit as possible. The development of a child is influenced by the results of his education, which can subsequently affect the development of the labor market. The amount of human capital acquired through the learning process depends on innate abilities. The main period for the formation of human capital is the age from 13 to 23 years. This is the period of hormonal explosion, puberty, when nature gives the growing body a surge of enormous energy. This energy must be transformed (sublimated) at the stadium in order to improve health, at the student bench and in the theater, in order to receive education and culture, learn to set and achieve goals in life, and overcome obstacles. A person can become a skilled worker by acquiring human capital, which is characterized by a high content of knowledge, promotes innovation and the development of new ideas. Formed human capital provides a person with a stable income, status in society, and self-sufficiency.

A feature of the process of human capital formation is that:

Longevity makes the acquisition of human capital relatively more attractive for people of all ability levels;
- increased innate abilities facilitate the acquisition of human capital.

The knowledge and skills embodied in a person are difficult to separate from human health, which also determines labor productivity. Public health policy is key to effectively building human capital. Access to health care and proper nutrition increases life expectancy and helps people become more effective at work. As the life expectancy of the population increases, it is beneficial for society to use the experience and skill of people, which allows them to do their jobs more efficiently.

The basis for the formation of human capital is the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. Skill development is becoming a priority for the country's economic development. Education is an important tool for the formation of human capital. Education improves the quality of life of people and their exercise of their civil rights and responsibilities. Education enriches a person's life by developing cognitive and social skills and by making people aware of their rights and responsibilities as citizens.

Workers with higher education are more productive than those with secondary education. Workers with secondary education are more productive than those with primary education, and workers with primary education are more productive than those without education.

Educated people have higher skills and are capable of effectively performing their work, and have a wider arsenal of tools to solve emerging problems and overcome difficulties. They are also better suited to perform more complex jobs, which often involve higher wages and greater economic benefits.

For well-being and human well-being, the formation and accumulation of human capital is the main goal of the state’s economic policy. State forms of education are one of the most important means of forming human capital among low-income groups of the population. People from low-income segments of the population, without access to physical and financial resources, while having a high cost of their own human capital, acquire the opportunity to earn money and influence the level and quality of life.

Countries can invest in public schools as well as adult education to reap these benefits and also help build human capital.

Building human capital through education and training promotes investment, enhances the development and adoption of new technologies, and increases productivity per worker. However, the relationships between education, inequality, human capital creation and economic development and growth are complex and often unique to a country's context.

The accumulation of human capital precedes economic growth and serves as the basis for economic growth. The process of human capital accumulation represents investment in education and training. Investments in education are a tool that influences the labor income of people's life cycle. The degree of accumulation of human capital varies by culture, country, and region of residence of the bearer of human capital. Human capital can accumulate until a person retires. The accumulation of human capital, being endogenous, responds to incentives associated with changes in technological knowledge. Human capital accumulation endogenously tends to zero some time before retirement. Older workers have low motivation for professional training (retraining).

Developed countries have more financial resources to invest in human capital accumulation. In less developed countries, labor productivity is very low. To increase this potential there is a need to form human capital. In developing countries, the formation of human capital is carried out by the provision of public services for the introduction of new production methods and the creation of an education system.

The development of human capital occurs through the creation of comfortable living conditions: income growth, good roads, landscaped yards, modern medical and educational services, as well as a cultural environment.

The state of human capital in least developed countries is reflected in the Human Capital Index indicators related to the level of education, health and nutrition:

Percentage of population undernourished;
- mortality rate among children under five years of age;
- general indicator of children's education in secondary school;
- literacy rate among the adult population.

The complementarity of human and physical capital in an economy leads to accelerated investment in human and physical capital in the long term.

Along with the priority development of human capital and the service economy, the most important sector for the realization of knowledge, employment and income generation in the next 10–15 years will be the basic sectors of industry, transport, construction and the agricultural sector. It is in these sectors that Russia has significant competitive advantages, but it is here that the main barriers to growth and failures in efficiency have accumulated. Intensive technological renewal of all basic sectors of the economy, based on new information nano- and biotechnologies, is the most important condition for the success of innovative socially oriented development and the success of the country in global competition.

Increased productivity of the workforce can be increased by providing higher levels of education and skills.

The formation of human capital increases the income, level and quality of life of people, and is also an important factor in increasing labor efficiency.

Bibliography

Order of the Government of the Russian Federation dated November 17, 2008 N 1662-r (as amended on August 8, 2009) “On the Concept of long-term socio-economic development of the Russian Federation for the period until 2020” // “Collection of legislation of the Russian Federation", 11.24.2008, N 47, art. 5489.

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Coursework

Human capital

Introduction. 3

1. Human capital: essence and types. Formation of human capital 6

1.1 The essence of human capital as an economic category. 6

1.2 Classification of types of human capital. 18

1.3 Formation and accumulation of human capital. 27

2.Analysis of human capital in modern Russia. 35

2.1 The state of human capital in Russia. 35

2.2 The main problems of human capital formation. 41

2.3 Investments in human capital in Russia. 48

Conclusion. 54

List of used literature... 57

INTRODUCTION

Man, his creative abilities, intelligence, strengths and capabilities, with the help of which he transforms the world around him and himself, have come to the fore in social production.

Human capital today is the main value of modern society and a key factor in the development of the country's economy. The concept of human capital is the central basis of modern economic analysis, which is based on deep theoretical and methodological premises and accumulates research tools that interpret the essence, role, content, basic structures of types and methods of quantitative and qualitative assessment.

The concept of “human capital” is becoming of great importance both for economic theorists and for individual enterprises. Most enterprises are increasingly interested in accumulating human capital, as the most significant among all types of capital. The main factor in the accumulation of human capital is investing in a person, in his health and education. The study of problems of increasing the efficiency of the use of people's productive forces, which are realized in the form of human capital, is considered not only relevant, but is also put forward as a number of priority tasks in the structure of social and economic research. This implies carrying out in-depth scientific research on this problem.

The concept of human capital began to be intensively used in world science, assessing the importance of mental activity, identifying the need and the highest efficiency of investments in human capital.

The relevance of this topic lies in the fact that the development of human capital and its effective use is undoubtedly a priority area for many economically developed countries of the world. Investments in human capital, as most studies confirm, have higher returns. The development of human capital at the macro level leads to an increase not only in the standard of living, but also to an increase in the competitiveness and economic growth of the country.

The purpose of this course work is to consider the theoretical and practical foundations of human capital and its role in the development of the modern Russian economy.

In accordance with the goal, the following tasks are set in the work:

Define the essence and concept of human capital;

Consider the main provisions of the concept of human capital;

Consider the classification of types of human capital;

Monitor the development of human capital;

Determine the state of human capital in Russia;

Consider the main methods for increasing the efficiency of using human capital.

The object of research is human capital.

The subject of the study is human capital and its role in the modern economy.

Research methods:

Processing, analysis of scientific sources;

Analysis of scientific literature, textbooks and manuals on the problem under study.

The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

1. Human capital: essence and types. Formation of human capital

1.1 The essence of human capital as an economic category

The foundations for the formation of the concept of human capital were laid in the works of the founders of classical economic theory: W. Petty, A. Smith, D. Ricardo, who introduced into economic science ideas about the importance of labor, human abilities, and education in the growth of the country’s wealth.

W. Petty was the first to introduce and study the category of “living human forces”. He viewed it in the context of national wealth as an important factor in increasing the wealth of the country. A. Smith focused on the predominant role of human abilities in relation to material factors of production. He believed that the growth of labor productivity depended on the skills of workers and the improvement of machines and tools. D. Ricardo considered the necessary role of human education and population in the economic growth of the country.

The ideas of the founders of economic thought about the “human factor” of the economic development of society were applied by K. Marx. Agreeing with the ideas of the founders of classical economic theory about the place of labor in the economy, by labor he understood “the totality of physical and spiritual abilities” of workers who are used in the production process. However, Marx developed these ideas. He substantiated the need and importance of using special production and significant investments in creating a workforce.

Currently, some prominent experts believe that many modern economists completely ignore the ideas of Marx and the labor theory of value in matters of revealing the essence and content of the category “human capital”. We find it difficult to agree with this. Working in the era of industrial society, even then K. Marx called man himself fixed capital. In the era of post-industrial society, the category “human capital” is filled with new qualitative content.

The formation of the theory of human capital dates back to the mid-twentieth century, during that historical period of economic development, when differences in the rates of economic growth between individual industrialized and backward countries sharply increased.

At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 20th centuries, major contributions to the theory of human capital were made by L. Walras, J.M. Clark, F. List, J. McCulloch, G.D. McLeod, A. Marshall, I.F. Thunen, T. Winstein, J. S. Walsh, I. Fischer.

The German economist Friedrich List considered the main source of the nation’s wealth to be “mental capital” - inventions, achievements in science, art, etc. List believed that the well-being of a nation depends not on the amount of wealth, but on the productive forces that form this wealth.

The English economist Henry Dunning MacLeod considered exchange relations to be the main source of social value. He assigned particular importance to credit and banking operations in the economic growth of the country. He considered the knowledge, experience, and mental abilities of the worker to be the main factor in the prosperity of the population.

L. Walras, J. McCulloch, I.F. Thunen, T. Winstein, W. Farr, I. Fischer were of the opinion that human capital is the person himself, and not his qualities - education, abilities, etc. This position was later supported by A. Marshall. He introduced the concept of “personal capital,” which has physical strength, abilities, and skills that help increase labor productivity.

F. List, J. S. Walsh, J. S. Mill understood human capital not as the person himself, but as his ability to work, which are both natural abilities and abilities acquired by a person in the process of his life. This position was developed in the economic views of R. Dornbusch, S. Fischer, K. Shmanlesi, who considered human capital not only the physical and labor abilities of an individual, but also his spiritual and ideological characteristics - cultural, psychological, moral. They assigned a large role to the personal characteristics of the individual in the context of the social environment, the process of making management decisions, the willingness to take responsibility, composure and determination in the most difficult and unusual situations. Today, this is the basic idea of ​​many specialists in the field of management in matters of shaping the image of a modern manager in an organization, including at the level of senior management of an economic entity.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, economists working within the framework of the concept of human capital began to make the first attempts to quantify the effectiveness of human capital in the economy. They began to widely use economic, mathematical and statistical tools in such issues as: the cost of a person; the influence of the national education system on the economic growth of the country; family costs associated with increasing the economic value of a person; formation and use of government expenditures necessary for the upbringing and education of the population. A major contribution to the study of these issues was made by L. Dublin, F. Kram, I. Fischer, S.H. Forsyth. Certain provisions of the economic views of these major economists were later used in the formation of the modern theory of human capital.

The formation of the theory of human capital as an independent scientific direction is associated with foreign research in the 60s. second half of the 20th century. This was facilitated by the special socio-economic conditions that developed in the second half of the last century.

1. The transition to innovative production as a result of high achievements of scientific and technological progress. This led to an increase in the role of complex labor and special qualifications of workers, as a result of which the role and place of labor in the production process began to be rethought.
2. As a result of profound changes in the content of production processes in many areas of social life, the share of intellectual, highly professional labor costs of workers began to increasingly occupy the structure of the cost of the final product.
3. Accelerating the processes of humanization of socio-economic relations in the most developed countries of the world, the stability and authority of the “idea of ​​human value” at all levels of economic management - in socio-economic systems of various types and kinds.
4. The accumulated theoretical and methodological potential of human capital concepts in world economic thought. It made it possible to critically evaluate the state of scientific thought in the field of human capital concepts and create on their basis, taking into account new socio-economic conditions in society, a new independent scientific direction - the theory of human capital.

The term “human capital” first appeared in the works of the American economist Theodore Schultz, who believed that the well-being of poor people does not depend on land, technology and effort, but on knowledge, that is, on human capital.

Schultz viewed human capital as "something like an asset" and noted that a person's productive potential greatly exceeds all other forms of wealth combined. According to Schultz, human capital is formed from valuable qualities acquired throughout a person’s life, which can be strengthened through appropriate investments. An increase in human capital due to an individual's investment in himself affects changes in the income structure. This explains the fact that human capital is not limited only to innate abilities, but also includes skills and knowledge accumulated throughout life.

Schultz identified several types of human capital depending on the type of investment made in this capital: school education, on-the-job training, health promotion and protection, a growing stock of knowledge regarding changes occurring in the economy. Human abilities formed through the above types of activities can receive a capital assessment.

American economist Harry Becker summarized research on the theory of human capital in the course of explaining socio-economic phenomena. He considered the concept of “human capital” as a set of valuable qualities and believed that the approach of the theory of human capital is based on the assumption of rational behavior of the individual, market equilibrium and stability of preferences.

G. Becker, Schultz's colleague at the University of Chicago, expanded the scope of use of human capital theory in explaining various social phenomena.

By human capital, Becker understood the totality of a person’s skills, knowledge and motivations, and the approach to its study is based on the assumption of maximizing behavior, market equilibrium and stability of preferences.

The scientist considered the following strategy for rational families. Since the return on investment in children's human capital is much higher than the return on investment in other assets, the family first invests in children's human capital. After the return on children's human capital equals the rate of return on other assets, the family begins to invest in them with the goal of passing them on as a gift or inheritance to their children in the future.

Human capital, according to Becker, is a type of capital that is separate from physical capital, but has similar properties, namely:

Human capital is a durable good;

Human capital requires “repair and maintenance” costs;

Human capital can become obsolete even before its physical deterioration occurs.

Becker saw the main differences between human capital and physical capital, firstly, in the inseparability of human capital from the personality of its carrier, and secondly, in the ability of human capital to increase the efficiency of activity in both market and non-market sectors, along with this, income from it can take both monetary and non-monetary forms. According to Becker, people cannot be separated from their knowledge, skills, health, and values ​​in the same way that they can be separated from their financial and physical assets.

Within the framework of the theory of human capital, Becker pays special attention to the concept of internal rates of return, which can be individual and social. The first type of rate of return is considered from the point of view of an individual investor, and the second type - from the point of view of the entire society.

In the course of research, Becker came to the conclusion that on average the return on investment in human capital is higher compared to investment in physical capital, while it decreases with increasing volume of investment in human capital, while in other cases (compared to other assets) decreases little or does not change.

It is worth noting that Schultz and Becker, in the process of their research, sought to equate the role of human capital in creating the total social product with material resources.

Lester Turow, an American economist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the first to summarize research on the theory of human capital and paid great attention to the importance of labor. According to Thurow, people's human capital is their ability to produce goods and services. He singled out several abilities of people, among them he focuses on the basic economic ability, which is formed at the genetic level. “Economic capacity,” he writes, “is not just another productive investment possessed by the individual. Economic ability affects the performance of all other investments.”

Dutch economist Mark Blaug notes that human capital is the present value of previous investments in individuals' skills. Expenses of past years on the upbringing, training and health of an individual can bring benefits. But this benefit is formed in the case when a person’s productive qualities will be used exclusively to perform certain tasks in the process of producing material goods that bring income to the owner

Thanks to many years of research by foreign scientists, the theory of human capital has become a generally recognized scientific direction in the world, which has been actively studied in educational institutions. On the basis of this direction, the foundations of other areas of knowledge were laid: economics of education, economics of knowledge, economics of intellectual property. Human capital began to be interpreted in an expanded sense. Somewhat later, this was used first by Soviet and then Russian scientists.

During the so-called “era of stagnation” in the USSR, a number of outstanding works by Soviet scientists were published, critically assessing the achievements of foreign specialists in the field of the theory of human capital from the angle of the political economy of socialism: V.I. Basova, V.S. Goylo, A.V. Dainovsky, R.I. Kapelyushnikova, V.P. Korchagin, V.V. Klochkov, V.I. Martsinkevich. So, for example, R.I. Kapelyushnikov believes that human capital is a certain stock of knowledge, abilities and motivations that are inherent in a particular person. On the one hand, they require the diversion of funds to the detriment of current consumption, and on the other, they are reliable sources of earnings and income in the future.

In domestic science, the theory of human capital began to be studied in a fundamental way only from the beginning of the nineties of the last century, from the moment the implementation of radical economic reforms began in Russia. During this period, the first fundamental works in this area appeared by S.A. Dyatlova, A.I. Dobrynina, I.V. Ilyinsky, R.I. Kapelyushnikova, M.M. Kritsky, V.T. Martsinkevich.

The theoretical positions of domestic researchers are distinguished by a clearer distinction between the essence, content, forms and types, conditions of development, reproduction and accumulation of human capital. Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor of the St. Petersburg State Engineering and Economic University, Mikhail Mikhailovich Kritsky was the first among Russian scientists to carry out a positive study of the theory of human capital. In his works, the scientist noted that human capital is not just bought and sold, but is also advanced, reimbursed as fixed capital, and, accordingly, requires significant investments and is a long-term capital resource.

Kritsky, in the process of functioning and depreciation of human capital, identified three components that interact with each other: the consumption fund, the consumer services fund and the fund of dematerialized productive abilities of the population.

In a large economic dictionary edited by A.N. Azriliyan human capital is “education, qualifications acquired in the production process; knowledge and skills embodied in the workforce.” It is the concept of human capital that has become the most popular and the basis for the development of the theory and methodology of human capital by Russian specialists, including scientists from the St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance. For example, B.V. Korneychuk writes that human capital is “a set of qualities of an individual that serve as a source of cash income flow. It is measured by the amount of investment in education, health, etc.”

Anatoly Stepanovich Dyatlov defined human capital as “a certain stock of health, knowledge, skills, abilities, motivations formed as a result of investments and accumulated by a person, which are expediently used in one or another sphere of social reproduction, contribute to the growth of labor productivity and production efficiency and thereby influence growth of earnings (income) of a given person"

Lyudmila Georgievna Simkina develops Kritsky’s views in her works. Human capital is defined as the concept of life activity, which is carried out within the boundaries of saving time. Simkina considers certain forms of enrichment of life activity, which manifest themselves in consumption and production. The basis of this form of enrichment is mental activity. Since mental activity is a source of increased consumption, since its expanded reproduction is considered the basis for the production of economic relations of human capital. Identification of relative and absolute forms of enrichment of life activity by increasing needs and abilities allows Simkina to determine the historically specific form of human capital. “The productive form of human capital,” she writes, “is presented as the basic integrity of two constituent elements - direct labor and mental activity. These elements can act either as functions of the same subject, or as organizational and economic forms of various subjects entering into an exchange of activities with each other.”

A group of researchers led by Leonid Ivanovich Abalkin, considering the problem of strategic development of Russia in the new century, are studying human capital as a set of innate abilities, education, acquired professional skills, moral, emotional and physical health, which provide the opportunity to make a profit. Socio-economic progress is determined, first of all, by new knowledge acquired by research workers and further mastered in the process of education and training of workers. The main areas of activity that form human capital are considered to be the scientific and educational complex, healthcare and areas that shape living conditions.

Yuri Grigorievich Bychenko notes that human capital is:

a) an object of social relations in the social, labor, information, professional, social, political spheres;

b) the process of interactions, considered as investments in the formation of the individual;

c) a person’s accumulated set of knowledge, skills, abilities, abilities that have quantitative and qualitative characteristics;

d) abilities, knowledge, abilities and skills of an individual, which are the goal of the activities of the state, individual companies, families, enterprises;

e) abilities, knowledge, abilities and skills that individuals use to achieve certain goals and status in the spheres of social reproduction;

f) the main indicator demonstrating the degree of social welfare and determining the country’s position in the international arena.

Vladimir Nikolaevich Kostyuk, studying socio-economic processes and developing his own concept of development theory, defines human capital as an individual ability of a person that allows him to function safely in conditions of uncertainty. It includes rational and intuitive components in the structure of human capital. Their connection can enable the owner of human capital to achieve success where high qualifications and professionalism alone are not enough. He noted that talent is needed, which requires separate remuneration.

Among modern definitions of human capital, there are mainly expanded interpretations. A comprehensive definition of human capital in accordance with its broad interpretation is contained in L.Sh. Suleymanova In accordance with the definition of L.Sh. Suleymanova “is an innate, formed as a result of investments and savings, a certain level of health, education, skills, abilities, motivations, energy, cultural development, both of a specific individual, group of people, and society as a whole, which are appropriately used in one or another sphere of public reproduction, contribute to economic growth and influence the income of their owner.”

CM. Klimov believes that human capital is an integral category of a modern intellectualized economy. He names biophysical capital, social and intellectual resources of the individual as structural elements of human capital. CM. Klimov notes that “The efficiency of using human capital in production largely depends on factors in the social environment.” Agreeing with the understanding of human capital by S.M. Klimov, from our point of view, it is worth emphasizing the relevance of using human capital not only in production, but also beyond it. From this position, human capital is used “not only in production activities, but also in everyday life, in life beyond the boundaries of working time. Therefore, investments in the formation of intellectual resources, as well as human capital in general, are inseparable from consumption expenditures.”

The socio-economic form of human capital and its qualitative certainty are described by Anatoly Fedorovich Dobrynin and Anatoly Stepanovich Dyatlov. “Human capital,” they write, “is a form of manifestation of human productive power in a market economy, a corresponding form of human productive power enterprise introduced into the system of a socially oriented market economy as the main, creative factor of social reproduction.”

There is no holistic concept of “human capital” in Russian economic literature. Some scientists distinguish between a person’s physical and creative abilities, in addition to his knowledge, abilities and skills, which, as a rule, are sources of income for households and businesses. Other researchers consider human capital to be a set of certain qualities that a person accumulates during his lifetime or realizes as a result of investments.

1.2 Classification of types of human capital

Classification of types of human capital is possible for different reasons and for different purposes, which is presented in the literature on this issue. Almost all scientists recognize the reality and major role of human capital.

1) According to the level of limitation of the use of human capital, it is divided into:

a) Specific human capital - knowledge and skills that people use while in a specific position or in a specific company.

There are two types of specific human capital:

Positive - capital that guarantees the expected return on investment in specialist training;

Negative - capital that does not provide the expected return on investment.

The development of specific capital is associated with numerous costs of training specialists to perform specific job responsibilities in a specific workplace.

The company can reimburse expenses after training by paying a reduced salary, but in this case the employee may move to a similar position by leaving the company, as his human capital will increase. As a rule, specific human capital does not involve the use of unique information and skills in another company. In this case, training costs are divided proportionally between the employee and the company.

b) General human capital - knowledge and skills that, regardless of where they were acquired, can be applied in other jobs and companies.

2) According to the main forms of formation and accumulation:

a) Health capital is an important component of human capital, investments in which are manifested in maintaining working capacity by reducing morbidity and increasing the productive period of life. Physical strength, efficiency, immunity, increasing the period of intense work activity are necessary for all people in every field of professional activity.

b) Labor capital is the capital that an individual acquires or accumulates through experience, practical skills, abilities and education during his life period in a particular field of activity.

c) Intellectual capital is mental, creative activity, which is a unique attribute of the human mind and ingenuity.

d) Organizational and entrepreneurial capital - the ability to develop constructive business ideas, entrepreneurship, innovation, high responsibility, confidence, organizational skills, possession of trade secrets. The level of entrepreneurial abilities is realized in the amount of equity capital, which makes it possible to distinguish small, medium and large businesses. The quality of entrepreneurial abilities is assessed by the effective use of capital and the stability of business development.

e) Cultural capital - intellectual abilities, abilities, skills, work and everyday morality, law-abidingness, which an individual uses in the process of social activity.

f) Social capital is knowledge that can be transferred and developed through relationships between employees and partners.

f) Organizational capital is the systematized competence of a company, enhancing its creative and organizational potential, aimed at creating a product.

3) According to forms of embodiment:

a) Living capital is capital, which includes a set of knowledge, skills, abilities and health embodied in each person.

b) Non-living capital is capital in which knowledge is embodied in material and physical form.

c) Institutional capital - institutions that promote the effective use of all types of human capital.

4)By levels and features:

a) Individual human capital;

Individual human capital is an economic type of talent that includes the necessary individual qualities of a person, which he manifests through personal free will, for example:

Physical and mental health;

Knowledge, abilities, skills;

Natural abilities, moral capacity;

Education;

Creativity, inventions;

Courage, prudence, compassion;

Leadership, indescribable personal trust;

Labor mobility.

The value of individual human capital in the narrow sense is determined by the formula:

where Z is the individual’s knowledge;

U - individual skills;

O - individual experience;

And - individual initiatives.

The mental, emotional, motivational abilities that individuals possess determine their capabilities and significance in society or in an enterprise.

The skills that an individual acquires are considered a form of capital—individual human capital. Skills are acquired through intentional investments in education. Human capital theory views education as a commodity that must be used to obtain economic benefits. Individual human capital contains costs and investments for obtaining education and maintaining health, which ultimately leads to increased productivity of the bearer of this human capital.

In a broad sense, the value of individual human capital can be depicted through the formula:

where PS is the initial cost of individual human capital;

KMS is the cost of outdated knowledge of individual human capital;

SPZ is the cost of acquired knowledge and skills of individual human capital;

SI is the cost of investment of individual human capital;

y - coefficient of value of individual human capital

SZN is the cost of tacit knowledge, the capabilities of individual human capital.

Human capital can be enhanced through knowledge transfer. The transfer of knowledge contains such elements as the source of knowledge, the recipient of knowledge, their relationships, the transmission channel and a single connection.

b) Human capital of the organization(enterprises, firms);

Knowledge that is located within the organization and is used to ensure innovation, productivity, and quality is a characterizing component of winning the competition in the search for buyers, technologies, special knowledge, financing, which forms an intangible advantage. The dynamics of the formation of organizations and local systems are based on the exploitation of intangible resources.

The concept of human capital of an organization can be interpreted in different ways. These can be ideas, technologies, equipment, scientific research, job descriptions that belong to a particular organization. On the other hand, human capital is considered as the wealth of the organization in relation to the qualifications of the personnel. The human capital of an organization is formed with the help of employees, their innate and acquired knowledge, skills, capabilities and talents. As a result, the human capital of an organization is considered as the total value that is formed by the company’s employees in accordance with their skills, abilities, and abilities, using the company’s resources.

The development of the organization’s human capital is carried out in the following ways:

Acquisition;

Attraction and retention;

Development and preparation;

Mergers and acquisitions.

The cost of an organization's human capital depends on the category of employee. The value of an organization's human capital is greatly influenced by: high professional competence, intellectual and creative potential, the ability to assimilate innovations and be a participant in innovations, adaptability to rapidly changing production conditions, mastery of several specialties, and responsibility. The value of an organization's human capital is based on probabilistic nature.

An organization's human capital considers value, which is only meaningful in economic terms. The value of this type does not include the importance of the individual to family, society, or other nuances of one’s own social network. The main focus of the value of an organization's human capital is solely on the skills, knowledge and experience that a person possesses.

V) Regional human capital;

Currently, human capital is considered the main factor in the socio-economic development of the region. The economic success of a region depends on the population living in a given territory, the capabilities of regional human capital, and the level of unemployment. In regions with significant levels of unemployment, there is an outflow of labor, and as a result of a decrease in regional human capital. During the same period, actively developing regions experience a shortage of labor resources.

The property of mobility of human capital is used in regional labor markets for the purpose of intraregional movement of human capital. The mobility of the regional population is determined by economic and social factors.

The human capital of the region is based on public consciousness and socio-political development. Regional human capital is measured as the proportion of the population with a particular degree of education to total economic activity or income. The knowledge and skills of the region's population are considered a major contribution to the region's business competitiveness.

The development of human capital at the regional level depends on economic indicators:

Impact on the efficiency of the region's employment sector;

Increasing employment opportunities for individuals.

The deficit in regional human capital is considered to be a factor in reducing investment in the regional economy. Supporting professional and highly qualified personnel is one of the problems in retaining regional human capital. Globalization and actively emerging regions have a great influence on the outflow of talent from less developed regions.

G) National human capital;

National human capital is an integral part of its national wealth. The formation of human capital and increasing the quality of life relies heavily on the implementation of national projects. Human capital is considered as the ability of the population, which ensures economic growth.

National human capital contains:

Social capital;

Political capital;

National intellectual priorities;

National competitive advantages;

Natural potential of the nation.

National human capital is measured as a cost, which is calculated in various ways - by investment, by discounting methods. The size of national human capital is calculated as the total human capital of all people. National human capital makes up more than fifty percent of the national wealth of each of the developing countries and over 70-80% of the developed countries of the world.

The characteristic features of national human capital determined the historical development of world civilizations and countries of the world. National human capital in the 20th and 21st centuries is considered the main intensive condition for the development of the economy and society.

5) Supranational (global) human capital.

Globalization is the free, natural movement of all resources. The globalization of the economy creates a supranational, global level of human capital development. Global mobility of human capital within global corporations and firms increases their economic returns.

Global human capital is the totality of education, skills and personal attributes that are represented in the workforce. The concept of workers as important assets leads to policies forming international organizations in less developed countries.

The concept of global human capital compares and examines indicators of the quantitative values ​​of the labor force in different countries. The globalization of human capital activates enterprises to innovate. The development of human capital in any country can be realized through investments in education, healthcare, maintaining the conditions of family life, and the rights of citizens.

This classification of types of human capital makes it possible to analyze human capital at the level of the individual and the state as a whole.

1.3 Formation and accumulation of human capital.

The wealth of a country is its people. The country's economic growth will be achieved by increasing funding for human capital, culture, healthcare, etc. The development of mental and spiritual abilities of people, the accumulation of human capital today remains an important task for any country. The main priority of budget expenditures is investment in human capital.

When each member of society has enormous potential, there is a significant increase in intellectual resources, leading to economic growth and significant opportunities for society. Human development involves:

Improving living conditions of citizens;

Significant increase in the competitiveness of human capital;

Providing favorable conditions for all members of society for the development of their abilities.

Today, the economic growth of countries depends on the level of formation of human capital, which expands the knowledge, skills and abilities of the people of the country.

The formation of human capital represents various types, forms and stages of the life cycle of individuals. Experts identify factors that unite into the following groups: social, institutional, integration, economic, production, demographic, socio-economic.

Conceptually, the model of human capital formation in a socio-economic system includes different levels: society, region, firm and contains a management subsystem. The subjects of the management subsystem are the state, higher educational institutions, enterprises and organizations, family and society, and the person himself. The object of management is human capital and its types.

Fig.1. Concept of the human capital formation model

The formation of human capital is a long-term process of increasing the productive qualities of the workforce. The formation of human capital plays an important role in the long-term economic growth of a country and provides the same benefits of new innovative technologies and efficient industrial equipment.

Professionalism, education and advanced training play a significant role in the formation of human capital. Education is a key element of human capital. It carries out two functions: individual development and economic, namely the reproduction of a qualified labor force. It makes it possible not only to master previous, already accumulated knowledge, but also facilitates the acquisition of new knowledge in the process of practical human activity, and creates favorable conditions for the purpose of their production in the future. With the help of education, a significant increase in the potential of human capital and its place in the socio-economic development of society is supported. It is not in vain that people believe that there is only one path to progress - knowledge and a means of overcoming all obstacles on this path - mental abilities.

The degree of qualification of workers, their professionalism is an important component of the quality of the workforce. This problem is being solved through the system of primary, secondary and higher vocational education.

Currently, Russian universities are implementing multi-level training of specialists, which has provided an opportunity to make the higher education system more flexible, providing students with the opportunity to choose a direction.

Professionalism is a special quality of people who regularly and effectively carry out difficult work functions with established quality indicators. This concept includes such a level of work performance that meets the standards and objective requirements available in the world. A person is able to obtain this quality as a result of special training and accumulation of work experience.

The activity of a professional is a multi-level system, which has not only external, but also complex, diverse internal functions. Professionalism is not only a high level of knowledge, skills and results of a person’s activity in a certain field, but also a certain system of organizing his consciousness and psyche.

Social institutions are found in absolutely all spheres of people’s lives, and in addition, absolutely all of them have an impact on the formation of human capital. To highlight significant institutions, we can apply the concept of “funds” of human capital.

By creating funds of one's own human capital, a person will be introduced not only into the system of social institutions that stabilize a certain sphere of activity, but also into the system of informal institutions. Informal - those institutions that are not formally enshrined, but are nevertheless an established way of action in a particular area of ​​formation and development of human capital. Formal institutions will begin to exert their influence by defining principles, restrictions and directions in people's behavior.

Moreover, human actions will also be targeted by the influence of informal institutions that reflect norms, values, traditions and habits. They can affect human behavior in any field of activity. That is, to exercise their influence both within certain organizations or associations of individuals, and in the sphere of general institutional influence.

The accumulation of human capital precedes economic growth and serves as the basis for economic growth. The process of accumulating human capital requires significant investment costs.

Investments in human capital are classified according to the criterion of their functional orientation. In the structure of investment in human capital, the main place is occupied by investments in health and education, which are the most important in its formation and accumulation (Fig. 2).

The formation and accumulation of human capital assets is carried out in the investment process, where investors are the private and public sectors of the economy. Reproduction of human capital occurs on an investment basis; the formation of primary assets in human capital is presented in Table 1.

Table 1

Forms of human capital: features of formation and accumulation

There are three main stages of human capital accumulation. In the first stage, the conditions for the accumulation of human capital are formed as a result of the system of investments of society, organizations, and families, a structure is created that ensures the expanded reproduction of the potential of human capital. At the second stage, the potential of human capital is formed, that is, a set of human properties that are used in the process of social production. At the third stage, potential human capital is involved in production and commercial activities, that is, it is transformed from a potential form into the form of real human capital. With this idea of ​​the stages of accumulation of human capital, investments in a person are not only the initial stage of formation and accumulation, but also sources designed to ensure the possibility of carrying out these processes.

Rice. 3 Stages of human capital accumulation.

Having considered all the stages of human capital accumulation, we can conclude that investment in a person represents not only the initial stage of formation and accumulation, but also the sources that provide the opportunity to carry out these processes.

1. Analysis of human capital in modern Russia

2.1 State of human capital in Russia

Human capital is a certain stock of health, knowledge, habits, and capabilities formed as a result of investment investments and accumulated by individuals that are purposefully used in one or another area of ​​social production. To analyze the quality of human capital, the standard of living, literacy, education, the state of medicine and GDP production per capita of the country are measured. These indicators are taken into account when calculating the human capital development index.

The Human Development Index is a ratio based on three dimensions of human capital:

Longevity and health status, determined using life expectancy;

Ability to acquire knowledge measured by average and expected duration of study;

The ability to achieve a decent standard of living, as measured by gross national income per capita.

The highest value of individual human development is 1.0. In order to measure human development as a whole, there are three composite indices: the gender inequality index, the gender development index, and the multidimensional poverty index.

Countries with the highest degree of individual human development;

Countries with an average degree of individual human development;

Countries with a low degree of individual human development.

Table 2

Countries of the world by level of human development in 2017

Key indicators of Russia:

Average life expectancy is 70.3 years;

The average duration of education is 14.7 years;

Gross national income per capita is $22,352 per year.

In addition to the above, of great interest is the study conducted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) together with the international consulting firm for human resource management Mercer - “Human Capital Report 2016”.

In this report, the WEF points out that in the 21st century, the main condition for a country's development and economic growth is human capital. By comparing human development opportunities across 46 country indicators, the human capital index can be determined. The report depicts a ranking that measures opportunities for human capital development across different age groups, including accessibility and quality of education; opportunities for advanced training; employment in the country's economy.

The ten countries with the highest human capital index included: Finland - 85.78; Norway - 83.84; Switzerland - 82.59; Canada - 83.87; Japan - 82.74; Sweden - 81.77; Denmark - 83.45; Netherlands - 85.36; New Zealand - 82.88 and Belgium - 82.11, which included fourteen countries in the group exceeding the 80% limit.

The index is used to assess human capital through indicators of the level of education, qualifications and employment of people ranging from 15 years to over 65 years. The objective is to evaluate the results of previous and current investments in human capital and to provide an opportunity to predict the situation in the future.

Table 3

Source: Federal State Statistics Service.

The index report includes information on the number of current and recent graduates in each country's major fields of study and data on workforce activity, as well as educational attainment.

Experts note that Russia occupies a high position in the ranking in terms of the level of education and qualifications of the workforce. In terms of the level of primary, secondary, secondary specialized and higher education, Russia is included in the group of leaders in all age groups.

There is a noticeable trend in the distribution of the population by type of economic activity, distinctive for countries with an agricultural production system.

Table 4

Distribution of employment by type of economic activity and profession, 2016, %

Source: Federal State Statistics Service.

Based on the objectives of the study, the age group capable of receiving higher education through full-time study is presented - from 15 to 24 years.

Table 5

Education indicators in the age group from 15 to 24 years old 2016

Continuation of table 5

Source: Federal State Statistics Service.

The country's strong position depends on the accessibility of the education system at all levels from primary to higher education. In terms of indicators that determine access to education, Russia ranks high. Russia's weaknesses include demographic factors, i.e. a low proportion of the population of working age, high unemployment, quality of education and health status of the population.

In terms of training, the most important were social sciences and business studies. A positive condition for the economy is the training of professionals in the field of construction, production, education and science.

Table 6

Students in areas of training 2016

Source: Federal State Statistics Service.

In the same age group, WEF experts provided information about the economic participation and abilities of the younger generation. Its results are shown in Table 7.

Table 7

Economic Participation and Skills 2016

Source: Federal State Statistics Service.

The table's information leads to significant conclusions. Russia ranks fifth in terms of underemployment.

According to the indicators of the educational system, economic participation, and on-the-job training, Russia occupies the following places, shown in Table 8.

Table 8

Country profile by age group 2016

Source: Federal State Statistics Service.

Measurements of human capital in Russia are determined by the analytical center under the Government of the Russian Federation. The base is based on the human capital index presented above.

2.2 Main problems of human capital formation

The problem of human capital development is of great importance, both in the world and in Russia. There are objective difficulties that hinder the normal formation of human capital.

First of all, wages in Russia are quite low compared to other countries. According to the International Labor Organization in 2017, among 71 countries, Russia ranks 51st with an average monthly salary of $570.

Table 9

Average salary by country per month according to PPP 2017, $

For the first time, the concept of bourgeois political economy “human capital” and its use in state practice, the achievement of the absolute limit of the accumulation of human capital and the steady reduction of its total value, which necessarily and inevitably aggravates the conflict between the material development of production and its social form until the beginning of the transition period, are briefly summarized to a communist social formation.

The factor of “human capital” in modern public policy.

If 30 years ago only in the publications of scientists and public figures, then in recent decades the documents of the UN, IMF, World Bank and national states have stated not just a change in the role of human capital in economic development, but the transformation of human capital into the main factor of economic growth , which is long-term in nature. Also in the Russian Federation, this thesis is affirmed in strategic planning documents officially adopted over the past 2-3 years. First of all, we are talking about strategies for the socio-economic development of the Russian Federation as a whole and its individual subjects. Such documents, on the basis of this “initial thesis”, establish that “the development of human capital” is recognized as “first” and “main” among the strategic priorities of the state.

But what is meant by human capital, how is the scope and content of this, which has become a normative term, revealed, and by what means is it planned to achieve this very “development of human capital”? An intelligible and more or less clear, not to mention complete, definition of the term “human capital” cannot be found in all these documents - as a rule, it does not exist at all. Instead, “development of human capital” is declared as a “strategic direction of socio-economic development” of the state and a list of “directions and projects” included in this “strategic direction of socio-economic development” is provided.

Disregarding some minor differences between strategic planning documents adopted by different government bodies of the Russian Federation and its constituent entities, we can state that they are all guided by a certain general list of “directions and projects” for the development of “human capital”. These include the following: demographic development; healthcare development; development of education; development of culture; development of physical culture and sports; increasing the level of employment and ensuring social protection of the population. To these, traditional since Soviet times, “branches of the social sphere” are added separate sections “justified by the needs” of specific (usually electorally and economically significant) social groups (pensioners, beneficiaries, youth, etc.), as well as the housing market .

In almost all strategic planning documents of the Russian Federation that I was able to get acquainted with, “human capital development” is replaced by the tasks of achieving certain target values ​​of several dozen abstract macroeconomic indicators of demography (target dynamics of population, fertility, mortality, etc.), provision of social infrastructure, living space, employment levels, social protection and safety. As for the proportions laid down in such documents between all these macro-social indicators, as well as between them and the macroeconomic indicators established in other sections of such documents, the proportionate proportionality of the values ​​of some indicators to the values ​​of all other indicators and their mutual conditionality is only declared as a general theoretical premise of the entire plan.

The target values ​​of demographic and other social macro-indicators that characterize the population as a whole, the level of its income from all sources, the provision of social infrastructure and housing, established as “hospital averages”, are just some of the indicators that describe the conditions necessary and sufficient for the reproduction of human capital. But this is by no means all and far from all of these indicators, not to mention the conditions themselves. The real essence of the matter is not at all in these conditions and the “hospital average” macro-indicators.

The point here is not only and not so much about strategic planning. Modern government statistics not only in the Russian Federation, but also in most countries of the world, in accordance with the recommendations of UN statistical bodies and other international organizations, ensure the collection of initial data, their methodologically uniform aggregation and/or calculation of these same macro indicators based on these data. However, all this planning, implementation of plans, statistical accounting and monitoring of results have a very indirect relationship to the human capital of specific people and their families, cities and regions, regional units and individual nations as a whole. Equally, all this has a very indirect relation also to the reproduction of the human capital itself of each of these social groups and the total human capital of a particular nation and humanity as a whole.

Human capital.

Capital as such is, first of all, a social relation of value, reproduced in conditions of developed commodity production as a dominant relation, subordinating all other relations of social reproduction. If the expression “human capital” is used, then this expression itself, essentially the logical connections between the meanings of its constituent words, implies, first of all, self-reproducing social relations and human activity in the production and reproduction of value. This is summarized in the abilities and capabilities of a person to produce and reproduce not only goods, including works and services for which there is effective demand from other people and their (these people) corporations of various types, types and levels.

But these abilities and possibilities are also the abilities and possibilities of man to reproduce relations of value and all those social conditions that determine the necessity of relations of value and the process of their reproduction, including the reproduction of the very ability and capabilities of man to produce and reproduce values, as well as the very activity of man in production and reproduction of value. We are talking about the ability and capabilities of people to produce and reproduce, as well as the ability and capabilities of people to consume goods, including works and services that are necessary for a person to reproduce himself, his society and the elements of his material wealth (the totality of goods, works and services) .

Consumption of goods, works and services can be either productive consumption, in which case it is the production of goods, works and services, or consumer production, in which case it is the production of the people themselves and their society as such. So, it is only through the consumption of produced goods, works and services, carried out through the consumption of opportunities, including the ability to work (labor power), that people reproduce themselves, their society and their material wealth as such. Any specific consumption, be it productive consumption or consumer production, is carried out in very specific institutional conditions through the use of appropriate technology and is characterized not only by a very specific set of tools and objects of labor used, but also by a completely specific qualification and organization of this labor required by this specific technology and institutional conditions for its application.

The totality of knowledge, skills, abilities formed by an individual in the process of mastering certain types of his life activities, including professions, as well as his real ability to practically implement such types of life activities on the basis of existing experience and the corresponding knowledge, skills and abilities is now called the totality competences of this individual. In this regard, human capital, which currently characterizes a particular person as an individual, is not only and not so much a set of competencies and other qualitative and quantitative characteristics (age, health, education, culture, physical endurance, mental stability, etc. ) that characterize the individual at a given time. The specified set of competencies and all other personal characteristics of an individual in the modern terminology of UN documents and other international organizations (human development index, human development index, etc. indicators calculated by these organizations) is nothing more than the magnitude of the human potential of a given individual .

In order for the human potential of an individual to turn into capital, to become and be human capital, this individual must necessarily enter into well-defined, namely capitalist, economic relations with other people regarding the production and reproduction of values ​​as goods and continuously remain in these economic relations. That is, in order for human potential to turn into capital, become and be human capital, the latter must phenomenologically (on the surface of social life in its dominant ideological given to individuals) also reproduce itself not as a person in the sense of an individual, personality, but as capital and in value of capital. Therefore, a person (individual), having ideologically become capital, must receive a phenomenological dimension and expression precisely as capital, as capital, that is, not only as a value value, but also, ultimately, as a certain monetary value, the most developed form of which This is precisely the monetary form of value.

The value of an individual’s human capital, considered from this ideologically bourgeois point of view, is the total value of all practically applied, realized in practice through this practice, his (the individual’s) capabilities and abilities to produce and reproduce himself (the value of human capital) and all other specific values (goods) measured by a certain quantity. This certain value of human capital, assessed (measured) by participants in bourgeois economic relations between people and recognized through these economic relations, in other words is called the capitalization of a given individual at a given point in time. At each moment, the total capitalization of human capital is characterized by its inherent structure of those types of activities in which it (this human capital) is actually used, and the quantitative contribution of each of these types of activities to the total capitalization (profit or loss) of the individual.

In the conditions of a developed bourgeois society, the implementation of any type of activity requires technologically and institutionally determined costs (expenses) of human capital in the appropriate structure and quantity. On the other hand, for regular renewal, that is, for systematic repetition, of this activity through the use of this human capital, costs (expenses) are necessary for the simple reproduction of this human capital itself (its preservation unchanged in size and quality). From a bourgeois point of view, such expenses are nothing more than the depreciation of human capital, which is organically included in the totality of expenses required by a specific type of activity within the framework and for the purpose of simple reproduction of this activity.

The depreciation of any capital implies a thing form of the phenomenological being (here-being) of this capital, the varieties of which on the surface of social life are not only all the tools and objects of labor, but also the individuals engaged in the process of reproduction of this capital, that is, using this capital in the process its reproduction. This already implies that it is not these subjects themselves (individuals as subjects of labor), tools and objects of labor, but something else that is capital as such. These subjects themselves, tools and objects of labor, being the means of reproduction of capital, are just material (material) carriers or substrates of capital, to use the Latin term of Western philosophy. Material carriers of capital are subject to physical and moral wear and tear, therefore they are subject to timely replacement by other material carriers that functionally replace those carriers of capital that are worn out, that is, they are subject to normal and accelerated depreciation, accordingly, their (these applied material carriers of capital) physical and moral wear and tear.

Let us note the following essential point: the ideological understanding of the capabilities and ability of individuals to work as human capital, which is necessarily and inevitably subject to depreciation, has brought to its full logical and historical completion the process of final identification of a person with the bearer of capital, understood only as a material (commodity) means of reproduction capital itself. Through this ideological identification, not only commodity fetishism received its final historical and logical conclusion, but also the attitude towards man only and exclusively as one of the many material bases or carriers of capital, appearing as the highest form of institutional power, dominating over all others. over the process of social reproduction.

By the end of the classical era of the development of capitalist production in developed bourgeois states, almost every commodity involved in economic turnover within such states and in relations between them, with some exceptions in terms of labor, became a product of capital, that is, a product of developed commodity production. Compulsory general and vocational education, mass medical care for the population (mandatory vaccinations of the entire population, starting from childhood, the development of public hygiene and health care, supported by veterinary, sanitary, communal and medical services, first of all), the development of other institutional and ideological aspects of Western civilization turned into the product of capital also of human individuals themselves.

All this, in fact, created the material basis for the ideological qualification of individuals (humans) as human capital - the individual from a product of a family economic corporation of consanguinity turned into an integral product of many corporations of all types, types and levels, the activities of which are organized as capitalist commodity production , being subordinated to the reproduction of capital. At the same time, this same process also created the material basis for the ideological expression of each individual human capital as a certain specific ensemble of various varieties of this capital, namely professional (processing or production), cultural, symbolic, political and similar varieties of human capital.

At the same time, an individual is not exactly the same carrier of capital as all other carriers of capital in its commodity form (tool, object or product of labor). Unlike all other commodity forms of capital, and equally and unlike capital in the form of money, the individual is also the subject of labor that reproduces capital, and the subject of this capital itself. But this is a subject of capital that, acting as a special form of capital, simultaneously serves capital and represents, including personifies and personifies, capital, that is, it is nothing more than an agent of capital. Moreover, the individual represents and personifies capital (not only the commodity form of capital, but also capital as such) the more effectively the more he (this individual) is an agent of capital. And, on the other hand, the less and less effectively a given individual performs the function of an agent of capital, the more this individual is not only redundant, but also harmful to capital, dangerous for capital. That is, in other words, such an individual is subject to existential destruction as a carrier, representative, personification and personification of capital to a greater extent, the less this individual manifests himself as an actual agent of capital.

This is what determines the consistent expansion of the reproduction of increasingly more effective agents of capital with the simultaneous narrowing (up to complete cessation) of the reproduction of the least effective agents of capital and the expansion of existential destruction (up to physical destruction) of individuals harming the reproduction of capital. This logically and historically completes the process of the final transformation of capital into absolute despotic power over man (both the individual and society), his activity, consciousness and will, opposing man as an absolute force alien to him. And, consequently, by this same process of alienation and self-alienation of a person from his generic essence is brought to its logical and historical limit - to the self-destruction of a person not only as social individuals, but also as all other social “populations”, except for the “population” of the most effective agents of capital. The latter has a metaphorically very precise name - “golden billion”, but “billion” is only at a certain initial stage of this cannibalistic logic, and for subsequent stages, if there are any, we will naturally talk about an increasingly smaller number of individuals included in the “golden” number of capital agents.

If the scale of a certain activity carried out within the framework of the reproduction of capital on a constant technical basis expands, then this expansion is carried out due to investments (additional investments) of capital not only in the corresponding additional tools and objects of labor, but also in additional human capital. In other words, in this case we are also talking about the expanded reproduction of human capital, carried out in the process and through the expanded reproduction of relevant types of activities. However, if the technical basis for the reproduction of capital changes and at the same time the scale of application and, consequently, the amount of applied human capital is reduced, then the consequence of this, other conditions being constant, is the release of a certain amount (loss) of processing (used) human capital, which manifests itself as the release of workers. In relation to the entire professional and, more broadly, the entire social group to which the laid-off workers belong, we can only talk about the narrowing reproduction of this social group as human capital.

The part of human capital that was used before, but is no longer used, is not actual, but only eventual capital (capital in the possibility determined by the occurrence and presence of certain, well-defined conditions), remaining such only for a certain time, but decreasing by its value throughout this specific time. In the case of specific individuals, this manifests itself not only as disqualification (loss of competencies) of these individuals, but also as degradation of the personality of these individuals. A loss (decrease) in the total amount of human capital that a given individual or professional (social) group represents, when this loss is the result of their life over a continuous series of years, is degradation, but not at all the development of the corresponding individuals or social groups as carriers and representatives of capital .

At the same time, in a bourgeois economy, the implementation of any type of activity is aimed at obtaining appropriate income. These latter are characterized not only quantitatively, that is, in monetary (value) terms, but also qualitatively - as a list of produced and sold goods, including not only work and services, but also the very ability to work (labor). Both the costs of conducting an activity and the income from this activity have different sources, which are in certain proportional relationships with each other, determined by the technical basis of the corresponding production (type of activity) and the organic structure of the capital used in this production. All these proportions of income and expenses can and should be expressed as a balance of the corresponding items of income and expenses (costs) in the total balance of reproduction of a certain specific processing capital. This is also fully applicable to the balance of reproduction of human capital, since we are talking about the reproduction of this particular type of capital.

Only on this theoretical basis, considered so far only in its most significant aspects, the meaning and difference between the expressions become clear: investments (investments) in human capital, on the one hand, and investments (investments) of human capital in specific businesses or organizations (corporations) , on the other side. But if for the reproduction of financial or industrial capital the basic (primary) level is the world market (all of humanity as a global economy), then for the reproduction of human capital the primary (basic) level still remains not the individual and not even the world or national economy, but family as an economic corporation of consanguinity (household). It is the family, as a consanguineous corporation, in reality often consisting not of one household, but of several or many such households, that acts as the real personifier (owner) of capital, endowing individuals with not only the opportunities to form their ability to work, but also the opportunities use, ownership and disposal of various types of capital.

If in the entire previous definition of human capital we put a family (household) or a municipality, a region (a region or a republic as a subject of a state), a national state in the place of an individual, then we will get, if we take into account all the necessary and inevitable changes and complications, a definition of human capital respectively a specific family, municipality, region or nation state. Only from the considered point of view, the volume and content of the concepts of human capital and development (expanded reproduction) of human capital become logically quite definite and clear.

Limits of human capital accumulation.

What really interests any particular resident of the territory of a given region or nation-state? He is interested, first of all, in the certainty of what the purchasing power of his family’s income will be in a year, two, five, ten years. And it will be not abstractly, but concretely with a high degree of probability, based on the actual structure acceptable for his family, the quantity and quality of consumption of goods, works and services that guarantee his family an improvement in its real opportunities, position and status in this year, two, five, ten years. On what basis can he reasonably draw such a conclusion? Based on the confidence that his family’s consumption, improving in quality and quantity, and, consequently, his family’s expenses, growing in accordance with this, will be covered by the income it receives in a year, and in two, and in five, ten years.

The main factors of such confidence of people in their entire national mass are their national state and the social well-being of the bulk of the population of a given state. We are talking about the confidence of this mass of people that the state, firstly, will fully fulfill its part of the obligations to create and develop conditions that will ensure the supply of jobs necessary for their families in terms of wages and corresponding to the families’ ability to change the totality of competencies of its members. Secondly, we are talking about the confidence of this mass of people that the state will fully fulfill its part of the obligations to create and develop conditions that will provide the structure, goods, works and services required in terms of quality, quantity and price, in all spheres of reproduction human capital of the respective families.

This is the amount of real wages, and the amount of income from family property, and the amount of all types of pensions and social payments, and the amount of income from all other sources of gratuitous social support and possible borrowing, if any are required to balance the family’s income with its necessary expenses. Necessary family expenses include not only all utility bills, determined by tariffs and prices for relevant services, but also taxes and fees, interest on loans and repayment of the loans themselves, and all other payments required by law. In addition to them, the necessary ones include family expenses for food and clothing, home furnishings and living conditions, education and health maintenance, satisfaction of cultural and other needs of leisure, recreation and development, payment for transport services, including personal transport, covering the costs of maintaining and improving living conditions, creating insurance and reserve savings. And all of these are by no means “hospital averages”, but real values ​​that characterize the level and quality of life of that specific group (set) of families to which the family of this particular resident of the region or state belongs. Based on these real values, each family, in one way or another, plans and in fact regularly balances (or does not balance) basic daily, monthly and other balances of its income and expenses.

Another of the main factors and at the same time a guarantor of such confidence of the population is social practice, if it convinces that through their direct actions (protests, lawsuits, elections, etc.) or through political parties, trade unions and other public corporations, the population can force authorities and employers to fulfill their obligations to the population. This is firstly, and secondly, if this same social practice convinces the population that, despite the objectively and subjectively determined failures in certain difficult years, in the medium and long term (5-10-15 years or more) the state strives for consistent improvement of conditions that ensure an actual increase in the level and quality of life of the entire population.

But none of the above is visible even in the shadowy distance even in the strategic planning documents of economically developed national states and their regions, not to mention the real policies of the ruling class pursued by government bodies and economic corporations of transnational, national and subnational significance in all other states. Why? Apparently, because in terms of the accumulation of human capital, strategic planning documents are by no means the dominant instruments of actual management activities carried out by the authorities and management of states and corporations in reality, as well as institutional means that ensure the accumulation of total human capital in the corresponding national state.

The content of state strategic planning documents is “perpendicular” not only to the accumulation of human capital by the entire population of the respective states and their territories, but also to the real management of the economy of national states and corporations operating in this territory. The vast majority of such state strategic planning documents are a “bureaucratic brake” in the economic practice of state authorities and at the same time a “club” in the interdepartmental and intersectoral struggle of clans of the ruling class and corporations, the use (implementation) of which exponentially increases the “white noise” in state authorities and transaction costs of government regulation of the economy.

The results that will be achieved in the case of the use of funds planned by the current strategic planning documents of the national and subnational level not only in the current Russian Federation, but also in developed countries of the world, will most likely lead to a further decline in the total human capital of the overwhelming majority of the population and its further social and economic degradation than preserving what is existing. And no amount of “manual control,” including from the most brilliant state leaders, can even theoretically fix this.

The economic use of territories with a population of millions and tens of millions of people, and their development in modern conditions, is impossible to effectively manage in a “manual mode” even in the short term (one to three years), not to mention the medium and long term. These are only social disasters of all types, as a rule, “man-made”, that is, they are the inevitable result of “manual control” on the part of persons holding leadership positions at all levels of management “verticals” and “horizontals”. But sustainable development is possible only as a result of systematic efforts of the majority, if not all participants, of this process, purposefully coordinating and balancing their interests, available resources and daily activities according to tasks, territories and deadlines.

And here, namely by the distribution of the conditions of social reproduction and its results, the group and, ultimately, class interests of social groups of people in all territories of a given national state, the limits of accumulation of total human capital were and are relied upon not only for the bulk of its population, but also for the entire the nation as a whole. For a long period until the end of the 70-80s of the last century, the most developed nations removed such limits on the accumulation of their human capital, putting instead higher limits, not so much at the expense of internal sources of economic and social development, but through the exploitation of everything else humanity.

“Developing” nations removed (raised) the limits of accumulation of national human capital to a greater extent, the more effectively they carried out “catch-up development” not so much through internal sources, but through the “help” of developed nations and participation in the exploitation of other peoples. Ultimately, this inevitably led and led to the transformation of “developing nations” into actual neo-colonies of developed nations and the loss by developing nations of the very opportunity to catch up and overtake developed nations. Even modern China, apparently, is increasingly losing any real chance of becoming an exception to this general rule.

The global systemic crisis of the economic social formation, which passed into its final stage in the late 70s and 80s, has revealed not only to all of humanity as a whole, but every year it also increasingly reveals to the bulk of the population of developed nations the absolute limit to further accumulation human capital both globally and nationally. Not only that, in recent decades, even within developed nations, there has been an accelerating awareness among increasingly large masses of the fact that this absolute limit to the accumulation of their human capital is already a thing of the past, and that the value of their human capital already has a steady tendency towards a steady decrease in the medium and long term.

Historically arose and further aggravating objective social conditions and factors of the ever-increasing loss of human capital by the ever-increasing masses of the population of developed and developing nations necessarily and inevitably reveal and aggravate the conflict between the material development of production and its social form (see: Conditions and limits for the expansion of financial reproduction capital. Part 10: The relevance of the inevitable change in the social form of production). And this is necessary and will inevitably entail the development of the economic demands and economic struggle of the broad masses of developed and developing nations into their political demands and actions, which ultimately cannot but lead to ideological, political, economic and social changes, marking the beginning of the transition period to a different social form of reproduction of man as a person.

The problem of accumulating scientific knowledge, experience and skills of workers and their valuation as a real component of national wealth has not received proper development until recently, despite the fact that the formulation of this problem was one of the original ideas of classical political economy. This group of problems is often, with a certain degree of convention, united by a common name - problem human capital. The study of the reproduction of human capital in the modern economy involves studying the problems of the social movement of scientific and technical information embodied in the workforce of highly qualified workers.

At the dawn of the development of machine production, when the production process required a partial worker to act as an appendage of the machine, the application of scientific knowledge in production was completely separated from the knowledge and skill of individual workers. Moreover, the advent of machines in production processes not only failed to improve the skills of the vast majority of their direct participants, but also required the massive replacement of skilled, skilled manual workers with low-skilled workers capable of performing only a limited number of partial operations. Thus, in terms of his functional role in the production process, the partial worker himself found himself reduced only to the position of a machine, which that's why competed with him so easily and successfully, pushing him out of production.

This reduction of human production functions to machine functions is the fundamental ontological the reason for the fact that the theoretical doctrines characterizing the economic system of a society of industrial technologies proceed from the a priori economic equivalence of living and embodied past labor, without questioning the legitimacy of their comparison. However, the advent of the era of dominance of information technology should prompt researchers to radically reconsider this point of view, which for a long time seemed natural and the only possible.

Modern high-tech production processes, on the contrary, assume that the workers participating in them perform elements of complex creative, intellectual work, namely, they carry out the function of monitoring and managing the operation of machines, which means that modern production no longer requires partial workers, but workers - generalists, whose production functions can only be performed by fully developed individuals. Therefore, an inevitable consequence of the development of the information technology system will be the elimination of modern rigid forms of division of labor that chain a person to his profession, and with it the destruction of the prevailing system of private property relations today.

At the same time, this process is quite lengthy and contradictory, since the development of knowledge-intensive production processes, generally speaking, does not relieve the working individual from performing partial operations. As an example, we can cite the functions of an operator who controls and directs the work of highly complex high-tech production systems (for example, a computer operator): this work requires the presence of partial worker, and not at all a comprehensively developed individual, since it is based on the implementation of logical, rather than creative, operations.

Due to the global changes taking place before our eyes in the nature, content and conditions of social labor, today the role of information embodied in the workforce of highly qualified workers is significantly increasing. Modern production processes taking place in the most developed countries of the world place high demands on the level of literacy the people participating in them, that is, the ability of these people to extract from the world around them, process and record in symbolic form the information they need.

Identifying a person's literacy with his ability to read and write is an ahistorical approach. There was a time in human history when these two skills were actually enough to be a literate person. However, today the range of skills required for full participation in socially normal production processes is rapidly growing and becoming more complex. The presence of an individual at a certain level of education and intellectual development is a necessary prerequisite for his entry into production processes, the technical and economic conditions of which correspond to the socially normal level. According to K. Jaspers, a person himself becomes one of the types of raw materials subject to targeted processing. This means that today there is a need for a fundamental methodological development of the problems of reproduction of the labor force, taking into account the reproduction of the information embodied in it.

The accumulation of human capital (information embodied in the workforce of highly qualified workers), as well as the accumulation of any scientific and technical information, is a cumulative process, the quantitative side of which is described by logistic curves. They naturally arise in the process of studying various phenomena taking place in the sphere of labor and employment, in particular regarding the level of unemployment, income and consumption.

Statistical data on the dependence of the unemployment rate in various social groups on the level of their education and qualifications, presented in a number of recent publications, allow us to build the one shown in Fig. 5.8 dependence of the probability of losing a job during an economic crisis by one or another employee (parameter r) from the total investments in his human capital made during his entire previous life (parameter G): it is a parabola-type curve, the branches of which are directed downward, with a single maximum point.

In fact, the probability of job loss during a crisis as a function of investment in human capital obeys the law normal distributions. Roughly speaking, the probability of losing a job for both a worker with primary education and an academician is quite small - it is maximum for persons with incomplete higher education or just received higher education (young specialists). This is one of the reasons for the sharp “rejuvenation” of unemployment in countries experiencing an economic crisis.

It's easy to understand that increment the indicated normally distributed probability, expressed by an integral with a variable upper limit, as a function of the volume of investment in human capital, can be well approximated by the logistic curve:

Rice. 5.8.Dependence of the probability of job loss on the total volume of investments in human capital

Regarding the theoretical justification of the logistic nature of this dependence, it is easy to notice that the law diminishing productivity capital (diminishing returns on investment) applies equally to investments in human capital. In particular, statistics from developed countries of the world indicate that the costs of obtaining secondary education bring a more tangible economic effect and pay off faster than obtaining a higher education, and they, in turn, are more effective than the costs of retraining and advanced training carried out by at the place of work. Thus, according to some estimates, the rate of return on investment in secondary education is on average 11% in developed countries, while in less developed countries it ranges from 15-18%. The rate of return on investment in higher education is 9% for developed countries, and 13-16% for less developed countries. At the same time, a pattern can be traced in all groups of countries: the higher the level of education, the lower its returns. So, for primary education it can reach 50-100%, for secondary education - 15-20%.

The diminishing productivity of human capital immediately entails significant consequences for the formation and implementation of competent public policy in the field of education and science. In particular, the fact of diminishing productivity of human capital means that achieving universal literacy brings a more tangible economic effect to society than training superintellectuals in the presence of an illiterate majority of the population. Essentially, the policy of the cultural revolution, put forward and implemented in our country in the first decades of Soviet power, was aimed at using precisely this pattern. A nation in which everyone can read and write will, in the long run, outpace in technological development a nation in which the majority of the population is illiterate, although some individuals are geniuses.

Note that this formulation of the problem is fundamentally contrary to the state educational policy of most countries of the world (especially developed countries), in particular, the doctrine of education adopted in our country and which puts forward as the leading goal of the functioning of the education system not the training of specialists for the national economy, as it was first, but to satisfy the intellectual needs of an isolated individual. However, it would be unreasonable to believe that the needs of private individuals for knowledge exist in the abstract and independently of the needs of social production for qualified personnel. In any case, the final consumer of specialists with higher education remains the sphere of social production (material and spiritual). Therefore, the nature and level of training of specialists in universities are ultimately determined by the needs of modern production.

The application of logistic curves to the description of the dependencies to which the accumulation of human capital is subject is based on the fact that a certain part of the labor force of working individuals, which is the totality of their knowledge, skills and abilities, characterizing their professional, general educational and cultural level, is a cumulative, accumulating quantity , - in other words, is part main capital, in contrast to circulating capital, which does not have the character of a “fund” (stock), and "flow" (flow). This idea, which underlies many modern theoretical constructions (in particular, theories of human capital), is one of the leading ideas of classical political economy. In particular, A. Smith considered the creative capabilities of a person as an integral part of the total fixed capital of society: “The acquisition of such abilities, including the maintenance of their owner during his upbringing, training or apprenticeship, always requires additional costs, which represent the fixed capital as would be realized in his personality...”

Somewhat later, a similar idea was expressed by K. Marx, who noted that the totality of qualities that characterize a person’s ability to work forms the stock of his potential labor. Marx uses the term Arbeitskraft, not quite correctly translated as “labor force”. Information embodied in a highly qualified labor force and serving as the preserved result of previous labor (knowledge, qualifications of the working individual, as well as his general educational and cultural level, achieved by him through his free time), represent fixed capital, which is not spent every time without a trace in the labor process carried out by a given working individual, but transfers its value in parts to the newly created product, up to complete obsolescence.

Thus, the funds advanced for the purchase of living labor cannot be entirely attributed to working capital: by the nature of reproduction, part of the variable capital represents fixed capital, and the share of this fixed capital in the total cost of labor increases more and more as the process of social reproduction places increasingly high demands on the qualifications of working individuals and on their level of education. That is why training workers, improving their skills (as well as saving working time, which is a necessary prerequisite for this process) can rightfully be considered as the production of the total fixed capital of society.

Increasingly intensive attention to the problems of reproduction of human capital indicates that the time has come to overcome the still widespread view of investments in education and scientific research as expenses carried out for charitable reasons contrary to considerations of economic efficiency. The problem of measuring the micro- and macroeconomic efficiency of investments in human capital is becoming an independent problem that deserves the close attention of economists.

The key point in the study of country and regional labor markets should be the fact that these markets are stratified into three specified segments, each of which is characterized by certain patterns and logic of market equilibrium (disequilibrium). The next step is to recognize that these three labor markets have three different types of production possibility curves.

Let us denote by c(t) current consumption of a working individual at a point in time t, and through i(t) its current investments in the reproduction of human capital. Let now on the time interval quantities are considered

The values ​​/ and C are the average values ​​of the functions, respectively i(t) And c(t) on the interval or, in the language of statistics, the mathematical expectations of the corresponding continuously distributed random variables. To obtain adequate results, it is necessary that the interval was quite long, comparable, if not with the duration of an individual’s entire working career, then at least with the duration of the industrial cycle (minimum 5-6 years).

Production possibility curves characterizing the consumer’s choice between investments in human capital and current consumption, plotted in coordinates (C, G), vary significantly depending on volume distributed resources.

The minimum price of living labor, which predetermines the entry of a working individual into a discriminatory labor market, corresponds to the curve shown in Fig. 5.9. Optimal consumer choice, marked with a dot A in Fig. 5.10, assumes minimal investment in human capital, which corresponds to the level of education that is minimally necessary to participate in technologically primitive production processes.

The famous investor, whose meteoric career began by selling an ABC book for four soldi, maximized his utility function by moving along the production possibilities curve towards the point A, indicated by the arrow in Fig. 5.9.

With an increase in the price of living labor and, consequently, the total volume of resources distributed by the individual, the individual moves to the socially normal labor market, and the curve of his production possibilities changes as shown in Fig. 5.10. In addition to the global optimum A, to which indifference curve 1 corresponds, a local maximum of the utility function arises IN, corresponding to the volume of investment in human capital that allows an individual to work in the knowledge-intensive sector of the economy.

Rice. 5.9. Consumer investment choice: discriminatory

Rice. 5.10.Consumer investment choice: socially normal labor market

Let us note that the production possibilities curve (as usual, monotonically decreasing) in this case is non-convex: the section between the points A And IN in Fig. 5.10 corresponds to the level of education of a “dropout” whose investments in human capital have already deprived him of the opportunity to increase current consumption, but still does not allow him to count on optimal returns.

A further increase in the price of living labor leads the individual to the so-called elite labor market, in which the reproduction of human capital plays a decisive role. The production possibilities curve corresponding to this segment of the labor market is shown in Fig. 5.11. The optimal strategy of an individual in this labor market is the growth of investments in human capital, which significantly outstrips the growth of current consumption volumes (point A in Fig. 5.11). Although the local maximum of the utility function, corresponding to low-skilled labor, still exists (it is better to have no education at all than not to complete it), it is still significantly inferior to the global maximum and points in its immediate vicinity. This fact is illustrated in Fig. 5.11 in that indifference curve 1 lies above indifference curve 2, passing through the local optimum IN.

The fundamentally important point is that the three different types of production possibilities curve shown in Fig. 5.9-5.11, correspond to different volumes total income, that is, the total resources distributed by a working individual between his current consumption and investments in human capital. The relative position of these curves is shown in Fig. 5.12: curve No. 1 corresponds to a discriminatory labor market, curve No. 2 to a socially normal one, curve No. 3 to an elitist one.

Rice. 5.11.Consumer investment choice: elite labor market

Rice. 5.12.

The minimum required volume of resources is sufficient only for the purposes of current consumption (curve No. 1), and if this volume is exceeded, investments in human capital, even in the best case, grow slightly (curve No. 2). At the same time, when the main problems of current consumption are solved, a further increase in the resources distributed by the individual entails a sharp increase in investment in human capital, while the growth in the volume of current consumption is already small (D/ in Fig. 5.12 significantly exceeds AC). This, in fact, is the logic of the law. elevation needs: at a certain stage, the leading role is no longer taken by the quantitative increase in the volume of resources consumed by the individual, but by the development and realization of his creative vital forces and abilities. The so-called Engel's law also states that the volume of consumption of essential goods is little elastic with respect to income, in contrast to the volume of consumption of goods and services that ensure the accumulation of human capital.

Note that the strategy of an innovative breakthrough is available only to those countries in which there is a significant share of the population that makes up the elite labor market with the utility function specified by curve No. 3. If this share is low, then the majority of the population that brings the labor force to the socially normal labor market, guided by considerations of maximizing the utility function, will choose the “underinvestment” strategy corresponding to the point A in Fig. 5.10. Thus, the level of reproduction of total human capital necessary for the independent implementation of a global technological shift will be inaccessible to this country, and it will automatically become technologically dependent on other more developed countries.

This is one of the main reasons for the fact that the richest countries in the world concentrate high-tech production processes on their territory, seeking to move technologically backward and environmentally harmful production to the territory of developing countries, including Russia. At the same time, the cult of consumption is actively imposed on the corresponding countries, moving the consumer’s choice to the right and down along each of the production possibilities curves considered: following this cult entails an increase in the current consumption of individuals and, accordingly, a reduction in investment in human capital. This strategy is aimed at effectively eliminating competitors from the world market in the field of development and implementation of information products, which for the developed countries of the world are some new industrial countries (both the first and second waves) and Russia.