Critique of the «human capital» concept in social demography

Lebedev N. A.

The article deals with a complex of critical assessments by sociologists in relation to the human capital theory. The relevance of the topic lies in the fact that in order to predict the productivity of human capital as a factor in socio-economic progress, it is necessary to take into account the influence of not only economic, but also demographic processes. The article is a review and is devoted to the human capital theory from the point of social demography. The purpose of the article is to identify the main postulates of criticism of the theory of human capital in modern sociological literature. The research methodology is based on a systematic approach and includes the methods of the general scientific group (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction); as well as a number of special methods: content analysis of scientific literature on the research topic; retrospective analysis; system generalization method. As a result of the study, the author of the article came to the following conclusions: in modern sociology, the topic of human capital has not been sufficiently developed in terms of studying the influence of demographic processes. Moreover, the theory of human capital itself does not contain an analysis of demographic processes as a factor in the formation of human potential both for the labor market and for other areas of socio-economic development.

Keywords:«human capital», sociology, demography, institutional approach, behaviorism.