Counties play a crucial role in facilitating the sharing of resources between urban and rural areas and in enhancing farmers’ income. Taking Shaanxi Province as an example, this study selects county-level u- nits in Shaanxi Province from 2010 to 2020 as samples and employs the difference-in-differences ( DID) method to analyze how the county administrative system reform of county-to-city upgrading and county-to-district upgra- ding affect farmers’ income. The results show that: (1) Simply implementing county-to-city upgrading does not necessarily increase farmers’ income; ( 2) Compared with county-to-city upgrading, county-to-district upgra- ding can increase farmers’ income; (3) County-to-district upgrading has similar impacts on the reformed coun- ties and the built-up areas; (4) Implementing county-to-city upgrading can strengthen the effect of the previous policy of county-to-district upgrading on increasing farmers’ income in built-up areas; (5) The policy effect of county-to-district upgrading is mediated by land, with the area of land transfer playing a certain intermediary role. Based on these findings, the paths to improve farmers’ income through county administrative system re- form include: first, addressing the horizontal fiscal imbalance in urban and rural development; second, reasona- bly setting guidance and incentives for county administrative system reform; third, coordinating county adminis- trative system reform with the urban-rural integration development strategy; and fourth, focusing on the rational guidance of farmers’ employment in conjunction with county administrative system reform.