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Article History

Received: 8 April 2025

Accepted: 6 May 2026

First Online: 15 May 2026

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: This study is based on secondary analysis of publicly available, de-identified data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), together with the China Statistical Yearbook. No direct contact with human participants or collection of personally identifiable information was involved. According to the ethical review guidelines of the authors’ institutions and relevant national research ethics regulations, formal ethics approval was not required for this type of secondary data analysis. This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

: The China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) data used in this study were collected and managed by China Social Survey Centre of Peking University. All respondents provided informed consent prior to participation during the original data collection process. As this study relies solely on secondary, anonymized data, no additional informed consent was required. All analyses were conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and relevant national research ethics regulations. This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.