High-Resolution dataset on elderly care facility accessibility and inequality in 21 Chinese cities (2020)

Rapid population aging in China has created an urgent demand for equitable access to elderly care services, yet a notable data gap remains in quantifying and comparing accessibility across major cities. To address this, we present a comprehensive dataset on the spatial accessibility and inequality of elderly care facilities in 21 major Chinese cities circa 2020. The dataset was generated using the Gaussian Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (Ga2SFCA) method, which integrates facility capacity, population demand, and distance decay in travel behavior. Core data include 21 high-resolution (100 m) raster files measuring accessibility and 21 corresponding raster files (1 km) measuring spatial inequality using the Gini coefficient. Technical validation compared 4,099 model-derived network distances with commercial map service APIs, showing strong accuracy (R 2 > 0.94 for all cities). The full dataset, including raster and tabular files, is publicly available. This resource offers a foundation for research in urban planning, public health, transportation geography, and socioeconomics.