Research on the Impact of Demographic Structure Transition on Rural Economic Resilience: Empirical Evidence from China

Enhancing rural economic resilience is a critical pathway for unleashing endogenous momentum in rural development, safeguarding national food security, and ensuring macroeconomic stability. Employing panel data from 31 Chinese provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) spanning 2008–2023, this study employs the FAHP–Entropy Weight–TOPSIS composite method to measure the levels of rural demographic structure transition and rural economic resilience. We systematically integrate two-way fixed effects models, mediation-moderation models, and Spatial Durbin Models to identify the mechanisms, transmission pathways, and spatial spillover characteristics through which rural demographic structure transition affects rural economic resilience. The findings indicate that: ① The spatiotemporal evolution of China’s rural economic resilience is characterized by “stage-differentiated growth, synergistic evolution across dimensions, and regional pattern divergence,” and it currently displays a pronounced “core–periphery” structure. ② Rural demographic structure transition exerts a significant and robust negative effect on rural economic resilience. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that this inhibitory effect is only significant in major grain-producing areas and the central region, primarily weakening the resistance-recovery and innovation-reconfiguration capabilities of the rural economy. ③ The mechanism analysis reveals that the mediating effect of agricultural technological progress is not empirically supported, while the scale of cultivated land operations and rural digital infrastructure further amplify this negative effect. From a spatial perspective, changes in rural population structure significantly inhibit the development of rural economic resilience in the local region while generating a significant positive spillover effect on rural economic resilience in neighboring regions. However, the estimated total effects are highly sensitive to the specification of the spatial weight matrix. These findings should therefore be interpreted with caution. ④ Based on these findings, this paper constructs optimization pathways encompassing differentiated talent cultivation, industrial technology empowerment, scale operation adaptation, digital literacy enhancement, and cross-regional agricultural synergy, providing theoretical reference and policy references for hierarchically enhancing rural economic resilience and promoting high-quality agricultural development in the context of demographic structural transformation in the new era.