School of Economics and Business Management, Chongqing University, Shazhengjie 174, Chongqing 400040, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec 18;19(24):17005. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192417005.
High-quality human capital (HC) development has a strong influence on achieving a win-win target of economic growth and energy consumption mitigation based on the background of the contemporary "carbon neutrality" constraints in China. We here aim to empirically assess the effect of HC on energy consumption (EC) in 30 provinces of China from 2000 to 2019. Moreover, we broaden the literature by discussing the effect of HC in terms of impact mechanism and nonlinear relationship. Based on methods of the augmented mean group (AMG), the estimation of long-term impacts indicates that the improvement of HC significantly discourages the increase in EC. The intrinsic mechanism shows that the accumulation of HC significantly promotes the decline of EC through economic structure adjustment and technological innovation. Moreover, the threshold model indicates that income equality lifts the inhibitory impact of HC on EC. Accordingly, the development of HC should be involved in the policy preference of China's provincial and national development strategies considering its effectiveness in stimulating the reduction of energy consumption.
高质量的人力资本（HC）发展对实现中国当代“碳中和”约束下的经济增长和能源消耗缓解的双赢目标具有重要影响。本研究旨在从 2000 年到 2019 年，实证评估中国 30 个省份人力资本对能源消耗（EC）的影响。此外，我们通过讨论影响机制和非线性关系拓宽了文献。基于扩展均值组（AMG）的方法，长期影响的估计表明，人力资本的提高显著抑制了 EC 的增长。内在机制表明，通过经济结构调整和技术创新，人力资本的积累显著促进了 EC 的下降。此外，门槛模型表明，收入平等提高了人力资本对 EC 的抑制作用。因此，考虑到人力资本在刺激能源消耗减少方面的有效性，应将其纳入中国省级和国家发展战略的政策偏好中。
