<p>Reasonable water resource allocation benefits high-quality economic development in the Yellow River Basin. To achieve a quantitative analysis of water resource utilization, this study constructs a Gini coefficient model and a decoupling model for the relationship between water resource utilization and high-quality economic development. It selects data from the ten years of 2013 to 2022 and analyzes and calculates the decoupling elasticity and Gini coefficients of the nine provinces (regions) the basin passes through. The results showed that the Gini coefficients of water resources and regional GDP, industrial output value, and service industry output value in the Yellow River Basin were 0.4125, 0.4395, and 0.4209, all surpassed the warning line of 0.4. This indicated that there was a significant gap in its matching status, and further optimization of water resource allocation and improvement of utilization efficiency were needed. In addition, the regional gross domestic product of the provinces passing through the basin has shown positive changes, with the total water use in Gansu, Shanxi, and Sichuan provinces showing a downward trend. The decoupling correlation between the total water consumption and regional GDP in three provinces was weak, while the decoupling relationship in the remaining six provinces was strong. This indicated significant regional differences in the relationship between water resource utilization and economic development among different provinces (regions) within the watershed. By analyzing the Gini coefficient and decoupling effect, it is beneficial for the government to take targeted measures to optimize water resource utilization and promote high-quality economic development.</p>