Under the background of population aging, how to solve related problems about aging by means of design has increasingly become a hot topic in academic circles. Based on the research on resource ethics, CiteSpace software was used to analyze the current research on resource ethics in product design, service design and other related fields, and to point out the lack of research on resource ethics in age-appropriate design. Finally, from the perspective of resource ethics, according to the income difference, regional difference, self-care ability difference and other factors of elderly care resources, the new direction that should be paid attention to in the innovation of age-appropriate design was proposed.