Abstract: China is now at the crossroads of the aging wave and the informationization wave, and the rural elderly are “marginalized” at the time of high-speed social operation, thus becoming a disadvantaged group in the informationization and digitalization era. Information poverty is a new form of relative poverty in the information society. Combing with the two dimensions of information-use motivation and information-use skills, the information-poor elderly were divided into four categories： unmotivated-unskilled, unmotivated-skilled, motivated-unskilled, and motivated-skilled. Based on the empowerment theory, three types of information poverty in rural elderly groups including “incapability” “loss capability” and “weak capability” were matched. In view of the complicated environmental information poverty, the lack of motivation to obtain information and the weak information skills of the rural elderly, optimization was conducted from the information literacy of the rural elderly, the implementation of human information technology feedbacks and the construction of a fair and friendly information life environment for the elderly, in order to enable the rural elderly to actively integrate into the information society.

Key words: empowerment theory, rural elderly group, information poverty, digital dilemma