Spatial–Temporal Patterns and Coupling Characteristics of Rural Elderly Care Institutions in China: Sustainable Human Settlements Perspective
Authors: Li Chen , Wu Jiaji , Huang Yi 
Published: February 2023

With rapid urbanization, more and more rural young adults are moving into towns and cities on a large scale, while the elderly are largely left behind in rural areas. The number of elderly people living alone, disabled and handicapped in rural areas is increasing, adding to the already weak rural elderly problem and increasing the pressure on the governance of rural elderly risks. The sustainable development of elderly care institutions is an important element in tackling the rural elderly problem and a key aspect of managing the rural elderly problem. The article uses data on rural aged-care institutions in 276 Chinese cities from 2010–2016 to construct comprehensive evaluation indicators for the development of rural aged-care institutions, and uses a combination of hierarchical analysis, composite score method, Theil index and coupling coordination model to reveal the spatial and temporal patterns and coupling characteristics of the development of rural aged-care institutions. The study concludes that: (1) From the time series change, the comprehensive score of rural elderly institutions shows a “fluctuating” change process, and there are significant differences in the development of each secondary indicator. (2) In terms of spatial and temporal patterns, the overall scores of rural elderly institutions, hard environment scores, soft environment scores and service recipients scores show a clear “gradient” in the east, middle and west. (3) In terms of regional differences, the Theil index for rural elderly care institutions is from high to low: Hard environment > service recipients > soft environment > overall score. From the decomposed Theil index, the intra-group differences of rural aged-care institutions are much larger than the inter-group differences, and the intra-group differences of the Theil index of the four major regions generally show a narrowing trend, with the intra-group differences of the eastern region being higher than those of the western region, those of the western region being higher than those of the central region, and those of the central region being higher than those of the northeastern region. (4) In terms of coupling coordination, the coupling degrees of the four major regions all exceed the low-level coupling stage index and are in the antagonistic stage or the grinding stage, and the coupling degrees of the four major regions are, in descending order, central region > eastern region > northeastern region > western region. The coupling coordination degree of the four major regions from high to low is: Eastern region > central region > northeastern region > western region. Based on the empirical analysis, the article proposes a model path for the sustainable development of rural elderly institutions in three aspects: Coordinated development, coupled development and sustainable development, in view of the unbalanced regional development of rural elderly institutions and the low degree of coupling and coordination between the soft and hard environments.