Spatial inequality in human capital formation in Russia’s main macroregions (late 19th - early 20th centuries)

The article highlights the trends of unequal accumulation of human capital in late Imperial Russia as regards convergence and divergence in its largest macroregions (European Russia, Siberia, and the Far East), and also investigates the role of the central government in these processes. The main source of evidence on the funding for education and healthcare were the annual governors’ reports. The quality of their information in Russia’s eastern regions is assessed as lower than in the western ones. Additionally, the author employs the data from official publications of the statistical and financial offices, as well as estimates from academic literature. The starting point of the analysis is the pattern from the seminal work by Jeffrey Williamson (1965), in which the initial impulse to ‘modern economic growth’ (the term was coined by Simon Kuznets, 1955, 1966) first affected the core region and then spread to the periphery. As a result, the long-term trend of interregional disparities forms a bell-shaped curve. Studies on the main countries of Western Europe and North America have by large found evidence conforming to this pattern. The author finds that, in European Russia, since the late 1870s, interregional disparity in education financing decreased, while in healthcare it slightly increased. Spatial differentiation weakened in the branch where the share of central government funds was higher (education) and in the periods when it tended to increase (in both education and healthcare). Spatial inequality of the regions in Siberia and the Far East weakened over time in both areas of human capital formation, yet not very strongly and not so definitely. High per capita funding for education and healthcare in the regions of the Far East is explained by the relatively high level of urbanization, which was stimulated primarily by geopolitical challenges. This resulted in a high share of funds from the central government and from the urban communities. Thus, the pattern from Williamson (1965) receives only partial empirical support as regards Russia. The increased involvement of the central government was of a leveling nature, creating a counterbalance to interregional divergence. In the regions of Siberia and the Far East, the pattern in education is similar to that discovered for European Russia (inequality decreases as the participation of the central government expands), and, in the healthcare sector, it is the opposite of the latter (inequality increases despite the expansion of the central government participation). The trends identified in the dynamics of inequality and its factors in European Russia are confirmed by different measurement methods. At the same time, as regards Siberia and the Far East, there is a strong sensitivity to these methods. Therefore, the corresponding results are confirmed to a lesser extent. Acknowledgments: The study was carried out under the Russian Government assignment to RANEPA. The author would like to thank Vladislav O. Afanasenkov and Irina V. Shilnikova for supplying data on the population of Yenisei, Irkutsk, Tobolsk, Tomsk provinces, Amur, Trans-Baikal and Primorye regions (collected and reconstructed on the basis of the publications of the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the governors’ reports).

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