Assessing the State of Human Potential in Rural Areas
The purpose of the article is to develop and test methods to assess and analyze human development in rural areas. The research novelty of the article lies in the development and testing of the original author’s methodology for comprehensive assessment of human potential in rural areas. The authors consider human potential in rural areas as a system of three independent but interrelated elements (socio-demographic, socio-economic, and socio-cultural), identifying the “activity” component in each of them. The informational framework of the research covers statistics on the districts of the Vologda Oblast and combines indicators reflecting the socio-economic and demographic state of territories. Rural areas are no considered generally, they are differentiated by the degree of “urbanization” and proximity to major cities. This is due to significantly different degree of development between them. Districts with large cities are considered separately. Other districts are divided into three groups according to the demographic approach (it is assumed that rural areas are those where the share of rural population is over 50%). The authors come to a conclusion that the development of human potential in rural areas occurs though on a negative scenario, but evenly, and the specification on the level of “urbanization” does not reveal significant differences between the selected groups of municipal districts. This can serve as a confirmation that the term “territories outside large cities” successfully reflects the contrast between large cities and rural areas against which the heterogeneity of the latter is lost or simply not recorded by the methods of integrated formalized assessment. The research results are of interest to local governments and executive authorities in terms of ensuring strategic development of rural areas and identifying territorial imbalances. The prospects of the study are associated with the search for internal links between the selected components of human potential of territories.