It would be nice to see population growth during the game, in one of my latest games I was up at 90% ethnic minorities, and I pushed it down to 50% while maintaining the same population number, which looks odd. Population growth (from birth and immigration) is a feature I’d like, it could be affected by things like abortion policy, health and healthcare, a simulation of birth rates could be added, and it could indirectly pressure the school system (making it cost more, etc). Unfortunately it doesn’t look (to me) like this is possible to add from within the modding system (but educate me if it is).
That would be great !
Although you would need something like a dynamic age pyramid if you wanted to implement it and have effects on different policies : birth rate increase (through family policies or aborption laws) would impact the base while immigration (and some situations like brain drain) would primarily impact the middle (unless adding some family regroupment policy could make it impact the rest of the pyramid) and life expectancy would have an impact on the upper scales.
Of course, the effects would need to be really delayed (at least for natural growth) and could lead to major changes in the voting groups : the “youth” group could be very important in a country with a high birth rate and low life expectancy for exemple (this is the case in a lot of countries). And people would naturally shift between groups as they age and you cling to power…
Would it be hard to make ? It sounds hard to me but I have no programming skills…
Oh it would be a nightmare 
Actually it would be possible, but it means a whole new subsystem getting added which models each voters age over time, which sounds simple, but when you think about it, this means them moving through young to everyone to retired, and probably through a window of ‘parents’, which variable membership of all these groups over time. it would be fascinating to code, but I’m not sure the additional complexity would add to the ‘fun’ of the game enough to compensate for a whole host of potential bugs and balance problems. people tend to move from left->right politically over age, so that needs modelling top. It would be complex, but kinda fascinating. I can’t say I’m ruling it out
I, too, think having population change based on implemented government policies and choices the player makes would be an awesome addition to the game; though I’m not too sure how great of an impact it would have on game play. If this went through, then perhaps without playing to parents, and a lower birth rate (mixed with higher education?) could then give another dose of realism for what countries will be experiencing with the numerous retirees and the lack of youth working and funding the pensions.
The real point of this was that I wanted to note that I’ve actually read that people don’t move from left to right politically as they age, but that it is based on life experiences that affect people’s standing politically. The gist of the studies I’ve encountered seem to say that when you’re young and your life is all about you, you can be libertarian and not really care about things that don’t affect you. Yet, getting married, and then having children–that’s when people realize there’s a chance that their little baby will grow up in a horrible, unsafe world. At least that’s what I’ve come away from reading studies that have looked at the left-to-right through age concept. If you went forward with this concept; then I would think the game would have to track as people moved into different categories and then, perhaps, having a greater weighted sum of specific categories be what would pull them from, say, being in the liberal category to the conservative category–as a way of showing the change over time.
Thats very interesting, I’d always assumed it was due to employment. When you are young you have more memories of a (usually free) education and a life not concerned by money and debt and unemployment. Then as you age and have responsibilities, you worry more about earning money, the economy, and keeping your job etc, so you skew more towards a financial view of the world than an idealistic one.
Obviously it also depends heavily on your circumstances though.
I would think that employment would be a life experience that could have an impact on one’s political stance. Perhaps seeing what one earned versus what they actually get to keep (the amount of taxes) could affect one’s views on taxation.
So while the thought that people move right (become more conservative) as they grow older is true; from my understanding it would be attributed to the life experiences a person has, instead of just a factor of age. The two aren’t separate; as a person ages, they experience more in life. The naivety of youth gives way to a lifetime of experiences which shapes a person. As one grows older, they have more experiences, which affects their political stance. I’m just in favor of people getting beyond thinking “old = right; young = left”… it’s possible (likely?) that’s how it works out, but age isn’t the key to identifying political affiliation.