TANGIBLE COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH PARENTAL CAREGIVING: ANALYTICAL PROCEDURE AND IMPLEMENTATION RELEVANCE OF DEMOGRAPHIC POLICY

Abstract

The demographic situation has a significant impact on the socio-economic development of the country: the age structure of the population, the duration and quality of life, the processes of natural population movement and migration have a strong impact on the economic situation. In the context of unfavorable demographic forecasts, it becomes especially urgent to focus on the issues of the human resources reproduction incentive, as well as the qualitative aspects of their development that affect the country's human capital. One of the reasons for the decline in the birth rate, highlighted by demographers, are economic uncertainty and social changes taking place in the country. Trying to solve the problem facing the country, the government uses economic tools of demographic policy. In this regard, the issues of determining the necessary volumes of investment in human capital become important. The aim of the study is to develop and implement a methodology for analyzing the tangible costs of parental labor. The methodological basis of the study is the following: the research of the Russian scientists (N. M. Rimashevskaya, N. A. Kontakova, A. Sinitsa, etc.) and the foreign authors (G. Baker, P. Mira, S. Olivetti, etc.) investigating the issues of improving the methods of demographic policy, determining the cost of childcare, etc. Information base of the study includes data from official Russian statistics and budgets of the regions included in the Ural Federal District. To identify the features of the dynamics of the studied indicators, the basic indicators of time series were analyzed. The results of the study are as follows: 1) the key methodological provisions of the study of material costs of parental labor (classification of costs, stages of analysis and features of calculations on each of them) are developed; 2) the dynamics of direct and indirect parental labor in the period from 2011 to 2017 was analyzed; 3) the total cost of parental labor associated with the infant stage of its implementation in the Ural Federal district was calculated. Taking into account the tangible costs associated with the implementation of parental labor, will reveal the real costs of families for the birth, upbringing and socialization of the child, monitor the effectiveness of state measures of demographic policy, timely adjust the measures used and apply new tools aimed at stabilizing the demographic situation in the Russian Federation. Further directions of our research are associated with the assessment of tangible costs of parental labor at each stage of parental labor, as well as the study of the contribution of various subjects of parental labor in the development of the human capital of children.