Slobodenyuk E.D. Factors of success of professionals and the role of the quality of human capital among them. In: Human capital of Russian professionals: state, dynamics, factors : [monograph] ...

Abstract

This chapter highlights a dynamic plot that reveals how professionals' socio-economic well-being changed over time (namely, in the second half of the 2010s) and what role the quality of their human capital played in these processes. Long-term changes in the lives of Russian professionals are seen as their social mobility within three different social hierarchies: 1) by income, 2) by the opportunities and deprivations available in different areas of life, and 3) by the degree of subjective socio-economic well-being. The text of the chapter compares long-term changes in the lives of Russian professionals with similar changes in other categories of workers (which allows us to see the benefits of their human potential), pays attention to the ratio of mobile and immobile characteristics of professionals within the three social hierarchies, and analyses the role of human capital as a factor of stability in relatively prosperous socio-economic positions. In order to solve the set tasks, panel data from the RLMS survey of the National Research University Higher School of Economics from 2014 to 2020 are used, and the Group-based trajectory modelling (GBTM) method of analysis is used to identify the most common trajectories of change in the analysed indicator over time, visualise them, and then group those people whose indicator changed in the way closest to the identified trend. Both the trends themselves (their directions and the number of representatives in each of the three cases) and the characteristics of their representatives are analysed. The chapter shows that professionals are not protected from the risks of objectively measured chronic income disadvantage, although compared to other working Russians this is a rarer phenomenon for them (especially chronic deprivation). Risks are predominantly formed when a professional has low quality human capital or lives in rural settlements. Like all other Russians, professionals are exposed to increased risks of impoverishment also in the case of having a second and subsequent child. If we take into account all possible forms of disadvantage, including subjective disadvantage (especially if we consider not only cases of chronic disadvantage, but also episodic ones), these risks turn out to be quite significant. It follows that the problem of new poverty, first of all the poverty of professionals, is still relevant today. On the whole, professionals seem to have all is well. Their chances for stable well-being are higher than those of the overwhelming majority of working Russians. Moreover, the chances of achieving these high positions are largely determined by their knowledge, skills and abilities. However, they can do nothing to counteract the settlement inequalities that set them a rigid grid of external structural constraints. As a result, the richest and most privileged professionals are concentrated in cities, while the poorest and most deprived are concentrated in rural area. The settlement cross-section pulls down many other forms of inequalities, intensifying their joint effect. The most alarming factor is the negative assessment by some professionals of their position in society in the coordinates poverty-richness (i.e., in essence, their subjective assessment of the material situation of the family). Practically none of them perceives their position in society as high; every third professional at least sometimes felt poor in the period 2014-2020. The most negative aspect of socio-economic disadvantage of Russian professionals is that it is related not so much to differences in the quality of human capital of representatives of this group as to the influence of settlement inequalities and dependency burden. Thus, although we can talk about the relative success of Russian professionals by various (not only monetary) criteria against the background of other mass groups of Russian workers, this success even against such a background is not very pronounced. Among its factors, human potential is not dominant, moreover, its role in the conditions of rapid growth in the number of persons with higher education for the majority of professionals (except for professionals with a very high quality of human capital) is gradually declining.