The reducing number of children in Russia is a key challenge to the country’s socio-economic development as this category is a framework for human potential of the entire population. In addition to the problem of quantitative loss of the child population, there is a problem related to the deteriorating quality of its characteristics, in particular its health potential. In this regard, issues of assessing the human potential of children become more urgent. The purpose of the article is to analyze the theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the human potential of the child population, as well as to develop the author’s view on its study. The paper applies an integrated approach that combines principles of activity and adaptation approaches that determined the validity of considering the formation and development of the human potential of children taking into account age characteristics. The authors developed an index method of assessing the formation of human potential of the child population based on the calculation of the integral indicator for three sub-indices: health, intellectual and socio-cultural development. The method is based on data from a sociological survey of parents conducted in 2018 in the Vologda Oblast among households with children aged 3 to 17 years. It was found that the human development indicators of the child population have are high (index – 0.792 at an interval 0.2–1). The most formed component is health (sub-index of health – 0.816), which indicates the normal development of health skills of most children in accordance with age standards. The sub-index of social and cultural development that characterize the formation of skills of etiquette, communication, will, domestic, moral and ethical skills, comprised 0.789. The sub-index of intellectual development is slightly lower – 0.783; it characterizes how the development corresponds to the age standards of attention, memory, imagination, and thinking. The most formed human potential in accordance with the age standards is typical for children of primary school age (0.804), the relatively least – for children of secondary school age (0.782). At the further stages of the study it is planned to study the educational impact on the formation of human potential of the child population and develop tools to improve it
Keywords
health, intellectual development, human potential of the child population, activity approach, index methodology, social and cultural development