Trends and Institutional Sources of Financing Russia's Human Capital Formation (Late Nineteenth–Early Twenty-first Centuries)
ISBN: 978-1-83909-180-3, eISBN: 978-1-83909-179-7
Publication date: 30 September 2020
Abstract
This chapter sheds light on long-term trends in the level and structural dynamics of investments in Russian human capital formation from government, corporations, and households. It contributes to the literature discussing theoretical issues and empirical patterns of modernization, human development, as well as the transition from a centralized to a market economy. The empirical evidence is based on extensive utilization of the dataset introduced in Didenko, Földvári, and Van Leeuwen (2013). Our findings provide support for the view expressed in Gerschenkron (1962) that in late industrializers the government tended to substitute for the lack of capital and infrastructure by direct interventions. At least from the late nineteenth century the central government's and local authorities' budgets played the primary role. However, the role of nongovernment sources increased significantly since the mid-1950s, i.e., after the crucial breakthrough to an industrial society had been made. During the transition to a market economy in the 1990s and 2000s the level of government contributions decreased somewhat in education, and more significantly in research and development, but its share in overall financing expanded. In education corporate funds were largely replaced by those from households. In health care, Russia is characterized by an increasing share of out-of-pocket payments of households and slow development of organized forms of nonstate financing. These trends reinforce obstacles to Russia's future transition, as regards institutional change toward a more significant and sound role of the corporate sector in such branches as R&D, health care, and, to a lesser extent, education.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
We thank Anne Hanley and other participants of the Session “The power of the purse: public finance and human development in the developing world” at the XVIIth World Economic History Congress Session for their valuable questions and suggestions as regards an early version of this study. We are grateful to Girsh Khanin for interesting discussions which helped improve it. We appreciate helpful comments by Sergei Shishkin on specific issues relating to health care statistics. We appreciate helpful comments and useful suggestions from the anonymous reviewer and the editor. And we are indebted to Leonid Borodkin and Carol Leonard for their encouragement of this research. This chapter utilizes research materials funded by the Russian Foundation for Humanities (project number13-03–00015) and the successive Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project number19-010–00680). We naturally accept full responsibility for the contents of the chapter, including possible errors and omissions.
Citation
Didenko, D.V. (2020), "Trends and Institutional Sources of Financing Russia's Human Capital Formation (Late Nineteenth–Early Twenty-first Centuries)", Hanes, C. and Wolcott, S. (Ed.) Research in Economic History (Research in Economic History, Vol. 36), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 45-107. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0363-326820200000036002
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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