Abstract: Based on China’s urban level data from 2013 to 2020, this paper conducts an empirical research to explore whether consumption upgrading can affect economic developmentand how. The findings show that firstly, consumption upgrading has a significant and direct promoting effect on economic development, and based on the accumulation of consumption, it can breed human capital dividends for economic development from both the quality and structure of human capital; secondly, in terms of heterogeneity, the human capital dividend nurtured by consumption upgrading is relatively larger in the areas of population inflow and smaller in the areas of population outflow; thirdly, the threshold regression results show that, taking the education level of the labor force as the threshold variable, the threshold years for population inflow and outflow are different, with 12.31 years (vocational high school) and 8.67 years (junior high school), respectively. When the education years are greater than the threshold year, consumption upgradingis more able to promote economic development. Therefore, it is necessary to comply with the trend of consumption upgrading, cultivate growth points for medium to high-end consumption, leverage the accumulation of consumption to achieve human capital accumulation, strengthen talent cultivation, reasonably guide population mobility, and drive economic development.

Key words: high-end consumption, consumption structure, human capital dividend, economic development