Abstract: The poverty-stricken population spatial database in Henan was built with the help of GIS. Furthermore,the distribution characteristics of poverty-stricken areas, the degree of poverty-stricken population agglomeration and diffusion, the division of poverty-stricken areas were visualized to better understand the law of poverty-stricken population distribution. The main conclusions could be drawn as follows:(1) most of Henan poverty-stricken counties distributed in South, Southwest and Southeast, minority of them distributed in north and central area;(2) the poverty-stricken population in Henan was the densest in Zhoukou and Nanyang, and that was the most dispersed in Xinxiang;(3) the spatial distribution of poverty-stricken population showed the agglomeration of similar values. The poverty-stricken population tended to centralize on the whole;(4) there were significant differences of poverty-stricken level in the five geographical regions of central Henan, western Henan, north Henan, south Henan and east Henan, and that was the most serious in south Henan and east Henan;(5) Henan was classified into 4 areas according to the poverty occurrencerate. The four areas were poverty eradication area, mild poverty area, moderate poverty area and severe poverty area.