ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Int. J. Public Health

Urban-rural Differences of Impact of the Accessibility of Community Elderly Care Services on the Quality of Life of the Elderly

  • Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China

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Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to balance the resources for elderly care services in urban and rural areas, improve the quality of elderly care services, and enhance the quality of life for the elderly. Methods: Based on the survey data of Shaanxi province and the ordinal logistic regression method, the paper analyzes the index system and measurement results of the accessibility of community elderly care services, and explores the urban-rural differences of impact of accessibility on the quality of life of the elderly from the perspective of social support. Results: The accommodation of community elderly care service has a significant positive impact on the social relationship of the urban elderly, while the five dimensions of the accessibility of elderly care services have no significant impact on the social relationship of the rural elderly. Conclusions: The urban-rural differences of the impact are mainly reflected in the two aspects of accommodation and affordability. Government support and social organization support are the main reasons for the heterogeneity.

Summary

Keywords

Accessibility, Influence mechanism, quality of life of the elderly, social support, urban-ruraldifferences

Received

09 December 2025

Accepted

16 March 2026

Copyright

© 2026 Di and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Xiaodong Di; Lijian Wang

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