A Matter of Life and Death <IMG SRC="https://www.simcountry.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif" ALT=":&#41;"> <IMG SRC="https://www.simcountry.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif" ALT=":&#41%

How can I encourage natual population growth? It seems that my people don't procreate very well. My health, education, and welfare are all seemingly well - yet what use to be double-digit growth has slowly but surely faded away...

Thanks,
Ken
(Richard II of Kennikoslavia on LU)

your population is too large. Anything over 70 million becomes very hard to even maintain your population.

to encourage natural population growth you need to have more people age 18 to 30 and thusly less people over age 65 to free up that space...
several ways to accomplish this but they take time...

Simpeople ages 18 to 40 procreate. But you won't get very much out of the ones over 30.

Education and welfare have no effect that I am aware of.

Hi health will increase survival of children and workers. But the effect on elderly is much stronger. A high health index will eventually increase the number of retired people.

A high population also decreases birth rates. The game is set up so that it is difficult to get population over 100,000,000. If you bought a CCC with 7M people purchased 93M on the cash market and kept the health index at 100 you should have 0 growth or population loss. I haven't checked the exact numbers.

The combination of hi health extending lifespans and overpopulation decreasing birth rates sets up your country for a population crash. Most people playing Simcountry fall into this trap. The best way around it is to exchange a lot of population with countries that have a low healt

You don't need more than 10 or so special clinics. maybe 15 since you have population 100M.

50% of the total disabled can be rehabilitated. No amount of special clinics will increase the number of rehabilitated over 50%. It does not matter if you have enough CEO corps to rehab more. I made the same mistake too.

Same story with back to work schools.

PS -

So I'm basically just chasing my tail with back-to-work schools (which I thought would put more labor in the work force) as well as special clinics (same thought)? That seems counterintuitive - but I take your word for it... I'm find that GM is a tricky Son of a gun... So, if I begin reducing those numbers I will natually increase health and ed, yes? Because those resources will go back to helping the "average" worker? Am I understanding that correctly? I now find myself having to buy pops just to keep my economy from crashing with low #'s of workers... It sounds like I may have to begin closing some state corps... which was another waste of time and $... grr.

No, close the hospitals. That will kill off the old people. I'm not sure what is ideal health index. 100 is a good guess.

Closing hospitals frees up the workers from hospital staff. Corporations make good profits hospitals don't.

If you are trying to gain levels or if you are trying to boost your country score you will want all indexes higher.

The education index depends on what type of state and CEO corps you want. If you want a lot of high-tech and strategic corporations you need a higher ed index. I'm guessing an education index of 100 would keep an average company like oil or missiles staffed. New graduates replacing retirees and deaths. If you are expanding rapidly or you are converting to high tech levels a higher ed index can be very useful. If your population isn't growing, all your corporations are already at max efficiency, and you are not trying for a high country score then destroying schoo