In the dual context of labor force transfer and aging，this paper focused on the mechanisms of rural children’s migration on the self?rated health and chronic disease status of rural empty nesters. It compared the different effects of two intergenerational support modalities: financial support and proximity to residence on the health status of rural empty nesters. By uses of CHARLS data from 2015 and 2018，and the empirical analysis via propensity score matching and double difference methods，we found that rural ? urban children migration significantly worsened the self ? rated health and increased the prevalence of chronic diseases among the empty nesters. After comparing the two modes of children’s intergenerational support，it was found that the effect of economic support can improve the self ? rated health of empty nesters，but had little impact on the improvement of the prevalence of chronic diseases. Ignoring effect was not conducive to the self?rated health of empty nesters，but can alleviate the prevalence of some chronic diseases. Finally，the distance of children’s migration was used as a threshold to investigate which mobility distance was most beneficial to the health of the empty nesters. The results showed that the best self?rated health status of the empty nesters was achieved when their migrant children were in the same county/district but in different villages/communities. The above study provides a reference for the development of targeted policies for the care of rural empty nesters.