In economics, accounting and Marxian economics, capital accumulation is often equated with investment, especially in real capital goods.

But Capital accumulation can refer to either real investment in tangible means of production, or financial investment in paper assets, or investment in non-productive physical assets such as residential real estate, or "human capital accumulation," i.e., new education and training increasing the skills of the (potential) labour force.

Non-financial capital accumulation is an essential factor for economic growth, since additional investment is essential to enlarge the scale of production and increase employment opportunities. In modern macroeconomics and econometrics the term capital formation is often used in preference to "accumulation", though UNCTAD refers nowadays to "accumulation".

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