Spatial-temporal evolution and influencing factors of elderly care institutions in Chengdu City

Population aging, the elderly empty-nesters phenomenon and the weakening of family support of the elderly in recent years have accelerated the rapid growth of institutional elderly care services in Chengdu. Based on the data of elderly care institutions in Chengdu from 1950 to 2020, the development process, through the combined use of spatial analysis and literature analysis methods like the nearest neighbor index, kernel density analysis and spatial autocorrelation analysis, the paper probes into the spatial evolution process and influencing factors of elderly care institutions in Chengdu. The results show that:(1) the development of elderly care institutions in Chengdu is divided into four stages in time line: embryonic stage(1950-1960), exploratory stage(1961-1999), take-off stage(2000-2018) and high-quality development stage(2019-2020), and takes on the regional and spatial process of isolated distribution, scattered distribution and circular distribution in turn;(2) Nursing homes, apartments for the elderly and nursing houses are increasingly scarcely found from the central urban area to the suburbs, while nursing homes, welfare homes and sanatoriums on the contrary, increase in number from the central urban area to the suburbs. All types of elderly care institutions have different degrees of spatial aggregation and form aggregation cores of different sizes, of which the spatial aggregation of the outer edge of the first circle and the second circle are the most significant in terms of spatial aggregation;(3) The elderly population distribution, economic development, traffic conditions, medical resources, supporting facilities and policy factors are the major influencing factors of the spatial differentiation of elderly care institutions.