Human Capital, Strategic Development and Economic Growth in Romania: an Integrated Perspective, 2020–2025
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| Pages: | 66 : 80 |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the interaction between human capital, strategic development and economic growth in Romania during 2020–2025, a period marked by the COVID-19 shock, post-pandemic recovery, high inflation, accelerated EU-funded investment and renewed pressure to modernise education and skills. The study adopts an integrated economic perspective in which human capital is treated not only as educational attainment but as a productive asset whose contribution depends on labour-market utilisation, continuous skill renewal, digital capabilities and the institutional capacity to connect education with investment and innovation. The empirical component combines official Eurostat indicators, European Commission monitoring data and national and European policy evidence. Romania recorded a rapid rebound after the 2020 contraction, but the recovery coexisted with structural weaknesses: tertiary attainment among 25–34 year-olds was 23.2% in 2024 compared with 44.1% in the EU; adult participation in learning remained substantially below the EU benchmark; basic digital skills were weak; and the employment rate of the 20–64 population reached 69.0% in 2025 compared with 76.1% in the EU. The employment rate of recent graduates was 72.7% in 2025. The evidence suggests that the principal constraint is not the absence of investment alone, but the incomplete conversion of education, skills and labour supply into productive capacity. The paper argues that Romania’s strategic-development model should integrate human-capital objectives with investment policy, regional development, digitalisation and labour-market institutions. Because the national annual sample contains only six observations, the analysis is deliberately descriptive and mechanism-based rather than presenting an underidentified causal growth regression. The contribution lies in combining growth, education, employment and strategic-policy evidence into a coherent framework for assessing Romania’s capacity to transform investment into sustainable productivity gains. |
| JEL classification: | I25; J24; O15; O47; O52 |
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I25; J24; O15; O47; O52
