Abstract: Facing increasingly serious ecological and environmental issues, it is essential to strengthen the core role of human capital in green development. Using the provincial panel data from 2000 to 2017 in China, this paper empirically examined the impact of education human capital on the green economy, and analyzed the threshold characteristics of industrial structure changes. The research results show that education human capital has significantly promoted the development of green economy. Also, the threshold characteristic of industrialization level between education human capital and green economy is remarkable. With the rising level of industrialization, the green effect of education human capital is increasing, and this phenomenon has regional universality. The threshold characteristics of industrial upgrading are not significant, but under the constraints of industrialization, it has a significant role in promoting the green economy as a whole. In addition, with the improvement of green economy, the green effect of education human capital does not show an increasing trend, and the green benefit is the lowest at the middle level of green economy. Based on the above conclusions, we put forward some suggestions to strengthen the investment in education and optimize the industrial structure, in order to fully tap the green benefits of education human capital under the industrial changes.

Key words: education human capital, green economy, industrial upgrading, industrialization