![]() After all, it’s spent more than $200 billion over the past 16 years trying to encourage more people to have children. ![]() The government, they point out, should know this better than anyone. With young South Koreans already facing pressure on multiple fronts – from sky-high real estate costs and long working weeks to rising economic anxiety – critics of the zones say the last thing the country needs is yet one more thing to make them think twice about starting a family. (And even further below the United States, which at 1.6 faces aging problems of its own). Last year, its fertility rate dropped to a record low of 0.78 – not even half the 2.1 needed for a stable population and far below even that of Japan (1.3), currently the world’s grayest nation. ![]() That has left it with a problem familiar to graying nations across the world, namely: how to fund the pension and health care needs of a growing pool of retirees on the tax income generated by a slowly vanishing pool of workers.Īnd South Korea’s problem is more acute than most. In addition to the world’s lowest birthrate, South Korea has one of the world’s fastest aging populations. There are nearly 80 such zones on the holiday island of Jeju alone, according to a local think tank, and more than four hundred in the rest of the country, according to activist groups.ĭoubts, though, are beginning to creep in about the wisdom of restricting children from so many places, fueled by concerns over the country’s growing demographic problems. Hundreds have sprung up across the country, aimed largely at ensuring disturbance-free environments for the grown-ups. ![]() For a country with the world’s lowest fertility rate – one that has spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to encourage women to have more babies – the idea of barring children from places like cafes and restaurants might seem a little counterproductive.īut in South Korea, “no-kids zones” have become remarkably popular in recent years. ![]()
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