Talk:The Empire/@comment-5982863-20141011004849/@comment-5982125-20141013043001

Ohhhh....

Funny you should ask. I hadn't considered that. I would say that yes, the Helvetan population is growing faster in terms of crude numbers - the Empire's birthrate is certainly better than the above-2.0 necessary to sustain a population, as everyone is legally required to "contribute" at least one child (so that's 2 kids for a family, one for each parent) ... although a lot of these children end up essentially in the form of pre-arranged contracts (man agrees to impregnate a woman to fulfill both of their obligations and the child is given over to the state rather than raised by the mother). Their state gives generous subsidies and benefits to expectant mothers and other such benefits. The men only get benefits by proxy through a marriage, though. And of course a lot of women get "accidentally" pregnant and show up at the local civil service office of whatever Imperial ministry is responsible for population growth management (never named it) to claim pregnancy benefits. Abortion is, of course, very strictly illegal and tried as murder. But I would say the average is probably still only around 3-4 children per family. A lot of families would have more than 4 children but a lot of families would only have the obligatory 2 ... and the calculations would be further complicated by the fact that a woman or man might "donate" their obligatory warm body and then get married later and have more kids. The "donating" of children thing is much less common among women as most of the time the women are married at a fairly young age ... but more common among men, who often do it simply because they'll pay you a lump sum. Realize, of course, they don't have sperm banks, so it amounts to government prostitution to encourage population growth.

The Helvetans of course have no such system, no such all-encompassing super-rich state to run any such programs. But they're a poor agrarian society and those people breed like rabbits. :P Just look at Africa. But the actual fertility rates are more balanced because the mortality rate is so much higher. Still, their population is both many times larger and growing (slightly) faster.