Relationship between human potential and quality of life: results of correlation analysis

The article provides the results of a correlation analysis of the functional relationships between indicators of quality of life and human potential in Russia. The study was conducted on the basis of regional statistics for the period from 2010 to 2018 with the account of time series. While the notion of quality of life describes rather conditions of life, human potential reflects qualitative characteristics of population. Human potential is considered in a broad sense as a set of population characteristics that act as opportunities for realization and comprehensive development of a person in accordance with his aspirations and needs. In the author's view, human potential is of a paramount importance in the development of society and man, and quality of life acts as a factor designed to maintain and develop it. This determines the relevance of the topic of this study, aimed at finding functional relationships between the indicators of quality of life and human potential. The author selected 6 indicators of human potential: natural population growth, educational attainment, visits to museums and theaters, life expectancy, incidence of alcoholism and drug addiction, and crime rates. There were also selected 13 indicators of quality of life: population with income below the subsistence minimum, life expectancy, infant mortality rate, morbidity, number of doctors of all specialties, population with higher and secondary professional education, provision of places for preschool children in educational institutions, number of students, average per capita income, R/ P10% ratio, Gini coefficient, number of recorded crimes, unemployment rate. Some indicators are both indicators of the quality of life and indicators of the quality of population that made it possible to identify functional relationships between various aspects of human potential. The correlation analysis carried out in general for all years and regions discovered a number of regularities and allowed us to construct hypotheses, which were further tested in the regional context with the account of time series. The results of the analysis allow us to draw conclusions about strong impact of monetary income, poverty and unemployment on most indicators of human potential. There were also found relationships between the components of human potential themselves, such as life expectancy, crime rates, incidence of alcoholism and drug addiction. In addition, there was identified a number of regularities in the relationships between individual indicators of human potential and socio-economic indicators of quality of life. The relationships found also include: impact of crime on inequality, of infant mortality on natural population growth, etc.