Abstract: The mountainous rural poverty problem is the one of sharpest social problems in China. It is significant to research the poverty differentiation mechanism of mountainous rural areas for countryside development. Taking Wushan county in Chongqing as an example, the paper diagnoses the dominant factors of differentiation of rural poverty by using the geographical detector model and multiple linear regressions. The results showed that altitude, distance from the center of the county town and the township center, distance to the main roads and proportion of slope farmland are the leading factors affecting the impoverishment of rural areas in mountain areas. According to the leading factors of poverty differentiation in different townships and towns in Wushan county, the types of rural poverty areas are divided. Different policy measures are proposed for different geographical types of influencing factors.

Key words: poverty differentiation mechanism, poverty problem, rural poverty, geographical detector, influencing factors