Human capital and the effectiveness of investments in it

The article presents the results of research on the assessment of human capital, its role in the economic development of countries and the effectiveness of public investments in healthcare and education. The first part of the article reveals the essence of modern ideas about human capital; provides indicators and methods for its assessment, describes research methods. In the second part, the main results of the study are presented and their detailed analysis is presented. In particular, the authors emphasize that the assessment of human capital demonstrated its lower values in Russia compared to a number of economically developed countries of the world, mainly due to a higher incidence of infectious diseases, higher infant mortality and lower life expectancy. The conclusion is made about the dominant influence on economic growth in Russia of the cognitive part of human capital in comparison with its physical part. Based on the results of the conducted research, it was concluded that the effectiveness of state investments in human capital in Russia is higher than in a number of economically developed European countries, as well as in the USA and Japan. In differentiation by federal districts of Russia there was revealed a significant asymmetry in the value of the human capital indicator, which may be due, among other things, to different amounts of public investment in health and education per capita, as well as to the traditional for Russia very significant regional differentiation in most socio-economic indicators, including human capital.