HUMAN CAPITAL OF THE PODLASKIE PROVINCE (Kapital ludzki województwa podlaskiego)

This article is aimed at assesment of the level and development of human capital in the Podlaskie Province in comparison to the whole country, the neighbouring Lubelskie Province and to the most advanced Mazowieckie Province. The point is to show the potential and factors that might accelerate the development of human resources in the Province. The analysis was conducted through application of commonly used, in literature, measures of human capital such as: vocational activity of the population, the structure of population by the level of education, the unemployment rate, taking into consideration people with higher education, the structure of economic entities with regard to their size, forms of property, the foreign capital share, enterpreneurship as the number of firms per 10 thousand inhabitants, the coefficient of schooling institu- tions, equipment of schools and households with computers and access to the Internet, enterprises' expend- iture on R&D and employment in this sector, the structure of employment in R&D, GDP per capita. The analysis of human capital has confirmed significant differences in the development level of human capital in the Podlaskie Province compared to the national average and the average of other provinces. However, this difference is not consistent with the common opinion concerning the last position in the province ranking. There are also differences in the use of that capital, however, it is quite difficult to determin their range, due to the immeasurability of the problem.