TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIAL CAPITAL INTO ECONOMIC CAPITAL THROUGH EDUCATION (BY THE EXAMPLE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION AND BULGARIA)

Abstract

This paper is an analysis of different types of capital as well as of the opportunity for capital to be transformed into various types. The basic sorts of capital and their theoretical conceptions are being viewed with an attempt to prove that every resource should be considered as capital as long as they bring benefits which can be regarded as economic ones. Education and knowledge are important factors for the process of observing and analyzing the transformation of human or social capital into economic capital. On the basis of statistic data from Eurostat it is shown in this paper that there is a direct dependency between education and the economic growth of a given country. The main objective of the paper is to present the theoretical opportunities for capital transformation and to give examples for the latter through data from Eurostat. Moreover, we accept the working hypothesis that capital should be related to the personality that it belongs; and that in its essence it is uniform and it takes different forms through transformation. For the writing of the text we have used comparative and theoretical methods, adaptive methodology, deductive and empirical method and the statistical analysis method. The main outcomes of our research are as follows: capital exists in various forms; it can be transformed and it should be defined as a resource that brings additional dividends; human capital, albeit personal. Through its social function it is transformed into economic one and is useful not only for the individual but for society as a whole; education is one of the fundamental ways for human and social capital accumulation. There is a direct correlation between education and economic growth. Moreover, on the basis of the examples from the data from the European Union, it is clear that the more educated young people there are in the real economy, the higher the economic development is.