[WIP] Age Demographics

Democracy 3 modding
1

Age Demographics
A Democracy 3 Mod (in progress)
By Elinor
WIP

I’ve seen a few different people ask about getting age demographics and changing populations added to Democracy 3, so I thought I would give it a go.

My initial tests have suggested this can probably be made to work. Currently, the population is split into 4 categories:

  • Children (0 - 19) - Sorry teens, I know you’re not really children but you get lumped in here because of education costs and not being able to vote and also because of 5 year age bands!
  • Young Adults (20 - 29) - These are basically the ‘youth’ voting category
  • Adults (30 - 64)
  • Elderly (65+) - These are basically the ‘retired’ voting category.

These groups are then all added together to get a total population.

At the moment, the number of parents dictate how many children are born, and children age up into young adults, then into adults, then into elderly, and then they die. At the moment, 5 years worth of people age up into the next category each turn, which is probably quite a bit too much even with Democracy 3’s accelerated timescales, but it is useful for testing. This will probably be changed so it’s around 1 year per turn, which I think will roughly match the effect speed of education.

At the moment, only the number of parents has an effect on population, but I intend to add immigration, health and potentially stuff like the winter fuel subsidy and abortion law too.

The reason I’m posting about this here now is that I realise that the population size and age of population are going to have a lot of effects on the game. I’ve thought of a bunch of effects I think these categories will have (see below). However, I also really want to hear what you guys think should be the effects, as I’ve seen people have some good ideas on this front too. In particular, at the end of this post are some questions I’m not currently sure about the answers to.

Intended effects at the moment:
Children affect:

  • the cost of state-funded education and similar education policies.
  • the number of private schools.
  • the cost of children-related benefits.

Young adults affect:

  • the number of youth voters.
  • the cost of university grants.
  • the income from income and sales tax.
  • the income from graduate tax.
  • the number of liberal voters.

Adults affect:

  • the income from income and sales tax.
  • the cost of adult education subsidies.
  • the number of parents.

Elderly affect:

  • the cost of state-funded healthcare.
  • the cost of state-funded retirement, the cost of winter fuel subsidies, and other elderly related benefits (though some of these are accounted for with the voter group already)
  • the number of retired voters.
  • the number of conservative voters.

Population overall affects:

  • The cost of healthcare.
  • The cost of most things…? This probably needs to be a more specific list.

Questions:

  • Do you agree with the above list? What have I missed?
  • Where should immigrants come in? Intuitively, I think they’re going to be more young adult and adult, and few elderly. Does that seem reasonable?
  • Are there any other effects that should affect the population?

Any and all thoughts appreciated!

-El

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I hope I don’t misread anything, but isn’t it possible to let affect health care the lifetime? So how old people get should affect the state funded retirement.
The same goes then for child mortality, that you can prevent with some interesting policies.

How immigrants come in you could go with different approaches. By example: You could allow immigrant to marry abroad with a policy(something is used by dutch immigrants to get to the Netherlands) what could lead to higher adult immigrants.

My knowledge of coding is minimal so I have no clue how difficult the examples are, but I hope I make some sense.

~ GrumpyLion89

3

Wow, El! This sounds great! I really want this! It sounds really hard. Good luck with it!

-One idea is that perhaps the Motorist membership could also be affected by age groups. Young Adults and Adults would make it go up, in relation to the relevant policies and simulations.

-Luckily, Childcare Provisions and the like increase Parent membership already and this would result in more children being born. So, that works out.

-Costs for policies like Health Food Subsidies should be affected by the total population, if it’s not already.

-Number of elderly might also increase percentage of Religious as supposedly people not only get more Conservative, but more Religious as they get older.

-Perhaps you can fix the alcohol situation with this. If children grew up being able to drink, then they would be less likely to binge drink as young adults possibly decreasing alcohol abuse. That sounds a little hard to code, though, considering everything else you have to do.

4

A few ideas, they are all up for debate i think, demographics is a complex area of politics after all.

Children:
I think Maturity leave should create more children if it does not already.
I think higher Gdp should lower children (High gpd/per capita society’s tend to have low birth rate)
Maybe religion could affect birth rate. (Religious people tend to get more children per family)
How about urbanization? (Countries with low urbanization usually have many children per woman, though it might be correlated with gdp)
Maybe the happiness of parents. (If there are good conditions for parents it might tempt more people to get more children)

Young:
Maybe some effect on alcohol consume/Alcohol abuse. If I remember right there was a situation called Binge drinking maybe that could be reintroduced
Unemployment? Large generation of young people entering the job-market have caused severe unemployment in history. Example Spain, Denmark

Elderly:
Increased usage of private health services?

On a sidenote:
Are you guys sure that young people are more liberal than other age groups, and that elderly are more conservative? I think you are right about US. But im note sure it is that way everywhere. Top of my mind is Scandinavian countries where young people usually are Socialistic rather than liberal. And then go from socialistic towards liberal with age. I suspect something similar for UK, Young people favoring Labour and then becoming more conservative with age. In Germany I suspect young people might be socialistic too and then become more Christian-democratic/conservative with age?

5

Gram, what you are describing is essentially the same. Liberal/conservative does indeed vary from country to country. However, there are some universals. The game has to generalize for the Voter Groups to be relevant for all the nations. So this mod would have to as well.

Using Scandinavia was a ‘bad’ example. The people are still essentially going “left” to “right” as they get older, regardless of whether they are still on the “left” side of the scale. Socialist —> liberal (as I see it) is just saying they become less radical and accept capitalistic elements (right?). I say it’s a bad example, because Scandinavia is awesome in my eyes in that they are a “Leftist” region where adopting more traditional political ideologies apparently doesn’t mean being super racist and sexist.

But, that is taking the idea away from the liberal/conservative continuum. In Democracy 3, everybody is either a Socialist or a Capitalist and either a Liberal or a Conservative. People going from Socialist to Liberal might mean they were a Socialist Conservative and transitioned into a Capitalist Liberal. So in the game, having young people be associated with Liberals and elderly with Conservatives reflects the left–>right transition that occurs through the general population. This is just because idealistic young people have more energy and zeal while the practical elderly generally want to enjoy their last years with security and peace of mind.

Sorry, if I made it more confusing or missed the mark. Does this make sense?

6

Its a good point, indeed all the examples i gave is a transition from left to right. Whether its Scandinavians going from socialist to liberalist or Germans going from socialist to Christian-democrats. I think the problem is the liberal voter category. I think your are right if the liberals are indeed libertarians, meaning free of state interference. And i think in the game they are a lot. IE they like freedom of speech, dislike surveillance, like liberal drug laws and so on. If that is the case then i do agree people tend to go from liberals to conservative

Problem is if liberals also become economic and like for example tax reduction. I do not remember if liberals like tax reduction in D3, but if it is indeed as you described socialist vs capitalist(Economic) and liberal vs conservative (Values) then liberals should not respond to economical policies. If they do not i completely agree with you.

7

Sounds like a great mod, and I cant wait to get my hands on it.
Here are my two cents:

Young adults affect:

  • the number of liberal voters.
    I totally disagree with that. Tho you can categories me as liberal, I doubt conservatives are born old.
    If a youth will be brought up in a conservative household he is more likely to adopt conservative ideology, i doubt age has allot to do with it.
  • I think they should increase street gangs. (slightly)
  • Increase productivity.

Elderly affect:

  • the number of conservative voters.
    Against think age has much to do with it, just think of old hippies instead of old republicans.
    Age has little to do with political orientation.
  • I think they should increase the religious voters.
    Altho not religious myself (Atheist in fact…), one cannot argue that it is human nature to get somewhat closer to a belief system when one is older.
    Influence shouldn’t be too high tho.
  • Decrees productivity.
8

I would like to suggest a policy where you give subsidies for every new born child. This is a thing.

It’s suppossed to encourage more child births and boom the economy in less populated towns and it is very cheap. On the other hand, I think this can lead to more poverty (not much) becuase parents will take the money but not be able to raise the child since the payment is very short.

Ingame effects would be like this:

  • Increases GDP (after a long time).
  • Increases Poverty.
  • Increases Parent membership.
  • Increases Youth membership.
  • Parents like it.
  • Capitalists don’t like it (distortion of the market).

Remember, this would cost relativelly little. I don’t know if the socialists would like it. This is, in fact, tricking people into poverty for greater economic growth. Maybe you could make liberals dislike it?