Trending in China: Theories Abound for Why Educated Women Aren’t Having More Children

What’s trending?

Nearly 70% of female college graduates in Jiangsu province have had no more than one child, according to data released by the Jiangsu Bureau of Statistics on March 3.

This made waves on Weibo as of Tuesday afternoon, with the hashtag #Nearly 70% of Jiangsu women who attended college only have one child #江苏近七成读过大学的女性只生一个孩子receiving around 400 million views and garnering over 85,000 comments.

What’s the story?

A statement (link in Chinese) released by the Jiangsu Provincial Bureau of Statistics on March 3, revealed that the province’s natural population growth rate fell to minus 1.12 per thousand. This is the first time its annual natural population growth rate turned negative since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.