Life Expectancy Skyrocketing

Aug 4109 LU time. My Life expectancy jumped, death rate dropped, and population began to age. All without any chance in the healthcare Index or building hospitals. This has happened in other countries as well.

Has the GM changed death rates? There haven't been any updates posted in game news, for a long time.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

In my countries with pops of 20-50M, the death rate lowered by about 20%.
From the graphs it looks like it happened on Tuesday of this week. I also noticed that some corps started using Silver and Selenium that day.

Last week I noticed that new corp creation for weapons and ammo went back to normal. I can only guess that was do to Crimson One's delay.

The GM's are making changes. It is a shame that they do not post them.

Is it too much to ask for a change log so that we can know when the rules change?

Agreed,

The GM changed the death rate to be lower and now my life expediency is 150 years!!!

How the hell do my sims live to be 150 years old? They take more in Social security then they ever pay and its killing me.

So I'm assuming this is working as intended? And it is not a bug?
A lot of people will have to reduce the amount of hospitals in their nations. It would be nice to confirm it's permanent before they go demolishing their excess hospitals to bring their life span down to normal levels.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

the birth rate remained the same?

If GMs are tuning settings to finally achieve what is promised regarding population growth I am ok to wait that.

Population have not been growing for very large countries no matter how high the health indexes are, also for small countries growth rate was far too low to keep new players engaged.

Lord Mndz,

Births remained the same in the short term. However the ageing of the population causes births to be suppressed over time. Short term there will be a population spike (only among the elderly). However, long term, the birth rate suppression caused by large populations and ageing, will bring the population back to the same base level.

Long term, only the birth rate can really grow a population. Supressing deaths, just delays the inevitable return to the base population level.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

My life expectancy has now reached 106, with a healthcare index of 142. It's still rising (the life expectancy, not the the healthcare index), I wonder where it will peak?

Signed President of DanNation on LU

which means the problem is that the birth rate is only dependent on size of a population but not on health or welfare indexes.

I looked at the graphs for birth & death rates. As expected with the rising average age, deaths are increasing faster than births.

I would think that the health index does play a role with birthrate. If we ever hear from the GM's again maybe they could confirm this.

If that is the case then reducing the health index to increase the death rate may also lower the birthrate.

For now I stopped buying hospitals to see what happens.

JohnV,

Based off of past statements by the GMs. The Healthcare index does have a very minor effect on the birth rate. However, this effect is easily overpowered by the effect of total population, and population age.

Eventually, the births and deaths will adjust to the new base death rate. There will be no real change to our overall population. Beyond our population being far older, and as a consequence far more expensive in terms of social security.

I have also stopped building hospitals. So my Healthcare index is now 141, but my life expectancy is still growing at 108 years old. I wonder when it will finally peak?

It would be lovely to hear from the GM's about their plans and strategy.

Signed President of DanNation on LLU

I'm at 160 years of life expectancy

I remember that GMs said some time ago that life expectancy does not effect anything, this is just for fun to look at.

Lord Mndz,

Yes, it does not directly effect anything. However it is an indicator of how long your people will live. And as such, a measure of what percentage of your people will require social security long term.

Life expectancy of well over 100, will result in crippling social security and ageing problems.

Signed President of DanNation

I wouldn't call it crippling. My life expectancy is 121 years and I only pay 7B in social security payments with a SS index of 102 (80% setting). That is only a small fraction of my country's gross income.

John Galt,

How long has your life expectancy been 121 years? Chances are, most of the people are still in their working years. Once the bulk of the population hits retirement, then you'll have a problem.

At 121 years. Long term, you'll end up with more retires than workers.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

My numbers are about the same as your country on LU. Do you have a nation on another world where it is more problematic?

John Galt,

My point isn't that it's a problem right now. The change was to recent for the effects of the increased lifespan, to have truly come into effect. I was simply stating it was likely to become a problem later on, for a lot of people.

Everyone,

Also, I'm starting to think they changed the welfare index math at the same time. I haven't increased any of my stats. But my Welfare index has started growing again.

Without any inside information. My best guess, is that this is part of an ongoing effort to fight statistic inflation. That they intend to make 120 the new 140, as far as what counts as a good index.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Ah I follow you now Dan. I will keep monitoring it and see how it plays out.

We have increased birth rates two weeks ago.
I am sorry the game news were not updated.
Please read about it on the forum today under population.

we will increase birth rates again tomorrow.

I will also look into death rates.

We will publish game news after the upgrade tomorrow.

Andy,

Thank you for your communication. It means a lot to us. Having clarity about what has/will be changed, really helps us understand what is going on and plan accordingly.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

I will try to be here more often.
They kept me very busy recently.

The upgrade just happened and I see birth numbers up and death rates down.
Not all worlds finished processing yet.
It will show up on WG, FB and GR in and hour or two.