Author/Authors :
KESKİN, Abdullah Afyon Kocatepe Üniversitesi - Iktisadi ve Idari Bilimler Fakültesi (İİBF) - İktisat Bölümü, Turkey
Abstract :
Individual freedoms and democracy spread across all countries very fast. As a result of these developments, governments have to pay more attention to the policies that increase the welfare of their citizens. The increase in the welfare of the society requires economic development. But, the economic development is only possible with the activation of fundamental dynamics of economic development, not with the temporary populist policies. One of these fundamental dynamics is technological progress. The use of technology in the process of production has increased the factor productivity in the economic development. On the other hand, the development of technology and the use of it in the process of production are closely related with the quality of human capital. For the developing countries, like Turkey, the realization of economic development depends on improvement of the quality of human capital. Unless Turkey achieves this, it does not make sense to allocate resources on R D. Therefore, education must be the primary area to allocate resources to increase the quality of human capital. This requires providing better education for more people. It must be aimed to make university education available for more people by increasing capacities and establishing new universities; to match the qualification needs of industries with the qualifications of unemployed; to improve skills of workers by providing continuous education and job training programs; to provide labor force participation of women through the use of vocational education. In short, Turkey must target by implementing the life-long learning culture in all areas, since human capital forms the foundation of endogenous growth theories. The aim of the study is to investigate the concept of human capital, the relationship between human capital and economic development, the development problem of Turkey and the position of human capital of Turkey comparing with other countries. In the study, first, related literature is reviewed and the results of the empirical studies are summarized, then the relationship between human capital and economic growth is tested using a multi-linear regression model on the data of 177 member countries of United Nations. The study reveals that human capital is very important for economic development.
NaturalLanguageKeyword :
Human Capital , Economic Development , Human Development Index , Turkey
