Abstract: Human capital is very important to promote high-quality economic development. Industrial agglomeration may accelerate the accumulation of human capital due to knowledge externality and other reasons. This paper discusses the micro mechanism of industrial agglomeration promoting human capital accumulation, and uses spatial panel model and mechanism identification method to carry out empirical test. The results show that: specialization and diversification agglomeration and their interaction have a positive impact on human capital accumulation, but specialization agglomeration plays a stronger role. Reducing the matching cost will strengthen the specialized agglomeration and promote the accumulation of human capital, but can not strengthen the effect of diversified agglomeration. Competition fails to pass the mechanism test, which reflects that the current industrial development is “concentrated but not clustered”, and lacks effective competition mechanism. The spatial spillover effect of provincial human capital is significantly positive, but it is subject to regional trade barriers. Therefore, the key to accelerate the accumulation of human capital is to reduce the matching cost of factors, improve the industrial relevance and promote regional integration.

Key words: industrial agglomeration, human capital, spatial spillover