The Impact of Education on Social Capital

In recent decades, the intervention of social capital in discourses and scientific documents in the fields of sociology, social sciences and economics have been increased. This focus on social capital is justified by its role which it plays in the production of human, economic and institutional capital. On the other hand, Education is the basic component of social cohesion, national identity and democratization. Educational institutions are not simply a transferor of human capital but they also pass on social capital in the form of social rules and norms. This study sought to prove the hypothesis that education leads to improvement of social capital. Therefore, in the first step, using the Fukuyama substitution method for social capital variables and using the OLS method for the time series data of Iran from 1983 to 2014, the effect of education on each of the selected variables of social capital was estimated. Then, in the next step, to illustrate the impact of education on social capital using principal component analysis (PCA) method, a composite index of variables selected for social capital was constructed and the impact of education on this index was estimated. The results in both sections confirm that education is a key element for improving social capital or reducing some social delinquency as a measure of social capital.