Objective/Meaning Urbanization of population serves as a crucial driver for achieving green and low-carbon development in agriculture. Examining the impact of population urbanization on agricultural carbon emissions aims to provide innovative pathways for realizing comprehensive rural revitalization and fulfilling the dual carbon goals.

Methods/Procedures Based on provincial-level panel data from 2001 to 2022, this paper employs a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model to analyze the household registration system reform as a quasi-natural experiment characterizing population urbanization, thereby scientifically assessing its impact on agricultural carbon emissions.

Results/Conclusions The findings demonstrate that: (1) The household registration system reform significantly reduces agricultural carbon emissions, and this conclusion remains robust across multiple rigorous checks. (2) Agricultural scale operations and mechanization serve as critical mediating mechanisms through which the reform curbs agricultural carbon emissions, constituting key pathways for its emission-reduction effects. (3) The carbon mitigation effect of the reform persists in the long term but is absent in the short term. Moreover, this effect is statistically significant only in non-grain-producing regions, while remaining insignificant in major grain-producing areas.