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

Index/dimension	2011	2014	2018
Poverty incidence (H)	0.484	0.360	0.321
Poverty intensity (A)	0.432	0.415	0.408
Elderly poverty index (EPI)	0.209	0.149	0.131
Economic condition	0.195	0.161	0.132
Health	0.262	0.199	0.186
Living standards	0.168	0.105	0.083
Social participation	0.246	0.184	0.169
Medical care	0.175	0.098	0.084

Table 3 Elderly poverty index from 2011 to 2018

Other figure/table from this article

Figure 1 Theoretical framework
Table 1 Distribution of samples in 2011, 2014 and 2018
Table 2 Dimensions and indicators of elderly poverty
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