Deficit in human potential as a threat to modernization

This paper presents an analysis of the resource support for the reproduction of human potential in Russia from regional and sectoral perspectives. Russia’s place on the world map in terms of its human development is showed. It is established that only employees of the financial sector and mining industry are paid wages that ensure them a developmental pattern of consumption. The expanded reproduction of human potential (at the level of modern standards) requires at least a twofold increase in average real wages for all types of economic activity and at least a threefold increase in the average real wages paid to workers in the social sector and agriculture. Public investment in education, health, and culture in Russia is twice smaller than in developed countries; it can hardly compensate for the lack of individual investment in human development and negatively affects the population’s life expectancy and living standards. Proceeding from the works of well-known economists, the author attempts to answer the question whether it is possible to break the vicious circle low productivity-low wages and to define the priorities of social policy corresponding to modern challenges

Economic growth · Economics · Modernization theory · Economic and Technological Developments in Russia · Economic Development and Digital Transformation · Socioeconomic and Demographic Analysis