# The Effect of Population Control Policies on Societal Fragmentation

## TL;DR

This paper examines how population control policies can lead to societal fragmentation by altering family size distributions, highlighting risks associated with policies restricting families to fewer than three children.

## Contribution

It provides a theoretical and simulation-based analysis of the impact of population policies on societal cohesion, revealing potential fragmentation risks.

## Key findings

- Policies banning families of 3+ children may cause societal fragmentation.
- Simulation results demonstrate the risk of fragmentation under certain policies.
- Analysis shows dependence of societal stability on family size distribution.

## Abstract

Population control policies are proposed and in some places employed as a means towards curbing population growth. This paper is concerned with a disturbing side-effect of such policies, namely, the potential risk of societal fragmentation due to changes in the distribution of family sizes. This effect is illustrated in some simple settings and demonstrated by simulation. In addition, the dependence of societal fragmentation on family size distribution is analyzed. In particular, it is shown that under the studied model, any population control policy that disallows families of 3 or more children incurs the possible risk of societal fragmentation.