Abstract:

The article developed a methodological approach to assessing the state and level of development of human capital in the agricultural sector of the economy, which consists in the need to include indicators in the analysis that quantitatively describe the following subsystems of human capital: (i) biophysical, that is, the characteristics of the population as carriers of the ability to economic activity; (ii) competence, which includes two components: education of all types and levels, as well as the experience gained in the course of activities; (iii) cultural, implying an analysis of the level of formation of social and general cultural competencies through institutions and services that are not directly related to educational activities; (iv) motivational, which determines the motives and incentives of the population to certain forms of economic activity.

The work uses extensive empirical material to characterize each of the subsystems. In particular, when analyzing the biophysical component of human capital, such indicators are used as life expectancy at birth in the Russian Federation, the difference in life expectancy of the urban and rural population of the Russian Federation, etc. To analyze the competence component of the agrarian sector or even rural areas as a whole, the indicators of the distribution of professional educational organizations between urban and rural settlements of the Russian Federation, the graduation of specialists with vocational and higher education in the field of agriculture, the share of specialists with vocational and higher education in the field of agriculture in the general release of the corresponding educational level can be used.

The innovative potential of the agricultural sector of the economy can be assessed using indicators such as the number of researchers employed in agricultural sciences and their share in the total number of researchers; internal expenditures on research and development in the direction of "agriculture, forestry and fish farming" and their share of the total expenditures. The authors propose to measure the cultural component of human capital through the accessibility (largely determined by the number and geographical location) of cultural institutions as the main tools for the formation of these competencies. For this, indicators of the number of cultural institutions, including in rural areas, the number of public libraries and their coverage of readers can be used.