Quality of life and human potential in the concepts of sustainable and human development (part 2)

Human potential and quality of life are the most important socio-economic categories. On the one hand, development of society is connected with improvement of the quality of life of people and realization of their human potential. On the other hand, it is human potential that is currently the main driving force contributing to economic growth, scientific and technological progress and cultural development of the country. Despite this, there is still no clear definition and unified measurement system for these categories. Abroad, there is no concept of human potential in general, although many concepts appeal to this very category. This review article attempts to define these complex social categories and clearly distinguish between them. In the course of the work, the chronology of development of these concepts, their evolution from related concepts and interpretation by modern concepts were analyzed. There were shown the fundamental differences between human potential and quality of life lying in different research objects. If quality of life mainly reflects external conditions of life, then human potential has as an object of study qualitative characteristics of population and therefore can be called quality of population by analogy with the definition of quality of life. The author also gave analysis of two modern concepts of sustainable and human development, identified their main principles, goals and objectives, and compared them with each other. As a result, it was concluded that these two concepts are almost identical and interchangeable. Besides, both of them are concepts of improving the quality of life, their main goal is to create favorable external conditions in which a person can freely develop and realize his aspirations and needs.