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Socioeconomic reforms are needed to address disparities for the aging rural-to-urban migrant workforce in China

Nature Aging (2026)Cite this article

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China’s rapid recent growth has depended on a rural-to-urban migrant workforce that supports its factories, infrastructure and services. As the first generation of these migrants reaches retirement age, life-cycle challenges rooted in institutional exclusion — in particular, through economic disparities in pension support — are becoming apparent and urgently require reform.

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Acknowledgements

The author is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 42201207) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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  1. Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Huaxiong Jiang

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  1. Huaxiong Jiang
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Correspondence to Huaxiong Jiang.

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Nature Aging thanks Jing Wu, Zheng Zang, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Jiang, H. Socioeconomic reforms are needed to address disparities for the aging rural-to-urban migrant workforce in China. Nat Aging (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-025-01051-5

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