Reproduction of Human Capital as a Strategic Priority for Sustainable Development of Regions

The main wealth of the country, its main strategic resource that can ensure political, economic, environmental, and spiritual growth, is human capital. Its intellectual, entrepreneurial, and productive potential, the ability to create and accumulate knowledge, implement it in the production of goods and services, develop unique technologies, invent new types of energy, materials, information, etc., is the engine of scientific and technological progress and innovative restructuring of the economy. Investment in human capital, in intelligence, in the health of the nation, in education and science, and in creating conditions for the normal functioning of everyone is a prerequisite not only for improving the quality of life of the people, but also for achieving the Millennium Goals and Sustainable Development Goals, advancing the country’s development, and its social and political stability.

The research is aimed at developing theoretical, methodological, and practical provisions for the formation of strategic priorities for sustainable development of territories based on the reproduction of human capital. The theoretical basis was the available scientific works, certain provisions of normative legal acts, international framework documents, in particular from United Nations: Agenda 21 and the report Our Common Future, as well as local studies.

The generalization of various scientific points of view regarding the category of human capital allowed us to establish that it is an integral part of its carrier, and therefore, it is proposed to understand as such a set of personal qualities of a person formed, developed, accumulated and preserved as a result of investments in productive abilities, personal qualities and motivational behavior of an individual, as well as the ability to develop and accumulate the necessary qualities that are in his property, which he uses in economic activities and which provides him with a corresponding income.

The article substantiates the value of the category human capital for sustainable development. The territorial features of the reproduction of human capital are determined, based on which it is proposed to consider the region as space. It is proved that the reproduction of human capital occurs in the relationship and interdependence with the general periods of the life cycle of the generation, which served to distinguish the four phases of the reproduction of human capital. The architectonics of determining the strategic priorities of sustainable development of territories based on the reproduction of human capital, which is aimed at solving theoretical, methodological, and applied problems, is proposed.