Journal of Geographical Sciences

Understanding the urban-rural divide in elderly poverty in China

WANG Xia, JIANG Yuxuan, ADILI Meilikezhati, GAN Yuqing, JIANG Songnian, WU Lijun, HE Yihao

Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2026, 36(4): 987-1016. DOI: 10.1007/s11442-026-2479-8

Year	Area		Gender		Age
Year	Urban	Rural	Female	Male	60-69	70-79	80-89	90 or above
2011	4022	4594	4693	3923	676	2304	2383	3253
2014	2684	3237	3202	2719	254	1808	1816	2043
2018	7321	6054	7521	5854	1457	3307	3368	5243

Table 1 Distribution of samples in 2011, 2014 and 2018

Other figure/table from this article

Figure 1 Theoretical framework
Table 2 Dimensions and indicators of elderly poverty
Table 3 Elderly poverty index from 2011 to 2018
Table 4 Urban-rural difference of the elderly poverty index
Table 5 T-test results of the urban and rural elderly poverty index
Figure 2 Spatial variations in the urban elderly poverty index in China from 2011 to 2018
Figure 3 Spatial variations in the rural elderly poverty index in China from 2011 to 2018
Figure 4 Spatial variations in urban-rural differences in elderly poverty in China from 2011 to 2018
Table 6 Moran’s I of urban-rural differences in elderly poverty
Table 7 Determinants of the spatial variations of urban-rural differences in elderly poverty
Figure 5 Results of the Geodetector analysis (q values)
Table 8 Results of the Geodetector interaction analysis
Figure 6 Driving mechanism of the spatial variations of urban-rural differences in elderly poverty