History Main / PopulationControl

* The movie ''Film/{{Fortress 1992}}'' has the protagonist and his pregnant wife try to leave a dystopian US after it implements a one-child policy to fight increasing population growth. In fact, their first baby was stillborn, though the government apparently doesn't make an exception-one shot is all you get. For this "crime" their sent to a huge underground prison.

** The end of ''Literature/MethuselahsChildren'' mentions that earth now has such an overpopulation problem that you need a license to have kids. [[spoiler: Which is why earth needs Andy Libby's FTL drive.]]

* In Cyril Kornbluth's horrifying dystopia ''Shark Ship,'' the ocean-dwellers have a two-child limit (with officers of the ships forbidden children altogether for fear of nepotism.) [[spoiler: It turns out that the land-dwellers implemented a one-child policy, and this, together with their glorification of violence and torture, has effectively provided a solution to the problem of overpopulation. A Final Solution, as it were.]]

* Rick Griffin's ''Literature/TenThousandMilesUp'' takes place on board a GenerationShip that has maintained a constant population of 10,000 for four hundred years with contraceptive implants and a waiting list to reproduce. Captain Atari and his wife Jakari took themselves off the list, giving up their chance to have kids [[spoiler: until they steal a planet and a Terraformer and decide to stop enforcing the list.]]

* ''Literature/QuintaglioAscension'': The Quintaglious have Bloodpriests who ritually kill seven out of eight hatchlings to cull the race and insure their territorial instincts don't overwhelm them with too many people around. [[spoiler: Later they are violently purged for it.]]

* In "The Machine Stops", humans live their entire adult lives in one-person underground cells in which all their needs are met. The global Machine that provides for them keeps the birth and death rates balanced by mandating encounters for procreative sex - the only time humans actually interact in the flesh - and by approving requests for euthanasia from the elderly, sick, or unhappy.

* In ''LightNovel/ScrappedPrincess'', the entire world is allowed to have only so many human residents; when the population gets too big, the excesses are killed off by the Peacemakers.

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E8ForTheWorldIsHollowAndIHaveTouchedTheSky For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky]]" the Oracle chooses everyone's mate for them, to insure their social harmony, except the High Priestess. She is the only one allowed to choose for herself. It presumably also controls how many are born too, preventing any overpopulation in the ship's limited space.
** It's also mentioned in "The Mark of Gideon", where a planet's failure to deal with this led to ridiculously extreme overcrowding (though no problems with health or resources, apparently). The episode first aired in 1969. Kirk advocated birth control for them and offered to provide contraceptive devices (his stance was very controversial at the time, but seems blatantly obvious to most now).

* On ''Series/{{The 100}}'' the Ark has a one-child policy in order to reduce its population and conserve resources. To this same end, [[AllCrimesAreEqual it applies the death penalty towards even the most minor crimes]], and if resources are becoming truly scarce, the Ark's government is authorized to start [[DeadlyEuphemism "culling"]] large swaths of the population. Octavia was actually an illegal birth, leading to her spending her life hiding in floor panels. She [[CantGetAwayWithNothing is caught the first time she leaves her room]], leading to her arrest and her mother's execution.

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. As {{Worldbuilding}} in "Frontier in Space", a newsreader announces that the Bureau of Population Control has stated that any family willing to move into the [[DomedCity enclosed cities]] that have just been built in reclaimed Arctic land will be allowed to have two children. While a [[GreenAesop depiction of an overpopulated or polluted future]] was almost obligatory in 1970's and 80's Who, clearly SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale as in this episode Earth is the center of a galactic empire with CasualInterstellarTravel, raising the question of why people don't just immigrate to other worlds.

There are a number of variations on this. Sometimes every couple is allowed a fixed number (frequently two); other times, the number allowed is tradable, luck-based, or determined by some kind of eugenic principle (parenting skills are less commonly judged). Enforcement methods may range from punitive taxes on extra children, through mandated birth control and sterilization upon the birth of the last child allowed, to outright killing of excess population).

* ''Franchise/MassEffect''
** The quarian Migrant Fleet has to keep tight control of its population due to the limited resources. Tali mentions that they're currently running a one child policy, but also that the limit changes depending on the population and available resources and that there have even been some periods when the population dropped far enough that positive population control was used.
** Additionally, the turians and salarians forced this upon [[ExplosiveBreeder the Krogan]] via the [[DepopulationBomb Genophage]].
** The salarians themselves engage in a form of this by allowing only ten percent of their eggs to be fertilized. Unfertilized eggs hatch into males while fertilized eggs hatch into females. Females lay eggs at regular intervals, so allowing them to be more than ten percent of the population would lead to a nasty OverpopulationCrisis, as the salarians learned the hard way before they achieved spaceflight.

* Like the ''Series/SeaQuestDSV'' example above, the Marcos reign in the Philippines had death squads [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_children_in_the_Philippines#Summary_execution_of_street_child target street children]], mainly after being released from police detention cells.

* In ''Literature/InsideOut'' by Maria V Snyder, the population is divided into two castes, the Uppers and the scrubs. Scrubs are encouraged to have as many children as possible and are denied birth control. Men and children who break the rules are executed, but fertile women who commit infractions become "breeders", kept chained down and constantly pregnant until their bodies give out from the strain. Uppers, on the other hand, are allowed one child per couple. If there's an accident with their birth control, the extra child is dyed to look like the scrubs' ethnicity and given to a scrub foster mother. The overlords use this to foster class division, telling the scrubs that the Uppers are spoiled rotten and telling the Uppers that the scrubs are too lazy and selfish to use birth control despite their overpopulation.

* In ''Franchise/MassEffect'', the Quarian Migrant Fleet has to keep tight control of its population due to the limited resources. Tali mentions that they're currently running a one child policy, but also that the limit changes depending on the population and available resources and that there have even been some periods when the population dropped far enough that positive population control was used.
** Additionally, the Turians and Salarians forced this upon [[ExplosiveBreeder the Krogan]] via the [[DepopulationBomb Genophage]].

* ''Literature/EndersGame'' has a two-child limit enforced by punitive taxation. However, because Earth is governed by a somewhat weak version of TheFederation, certain individual jurisdictions, particularly predominantly-Catholic ones, seem to have lax enforcement policies. Ender is a state-sponsored exception as his parents were supposed to breed a fleet-commanding prodigy and his older siblings turned out to be a sociopath and a pacifist.
** Ender still took a lot of crap in school because of his Third status and, of course, no child would explain why being a Third is bad. Then again, when did kids (especially bullies) need a reason to be [[KidsAreCruel cruel]]?
** [[VoodooShark It is hinted]] in the ''Literature/EndersShadow'' spinoff series that the population laws were actually a ZeroApprovalGambit designed to be so unpopular as to hasten the dissolution of TheFederation after the war so that humanity would not be controlled by a single monolithic government that could be corrupted.

** It's also mentioned in "The Mark of Gideon", where a planet's failure to deal with this led to ridiculously extreme overcrowding (though no problems with health or resources, apparently). The episode first aired in 1969. Kirk advocated birth control for them and offered to provide contraceptive devices (his stance was very controversial at the time, but seems [[SocietyMarchesOn blatantly obvious to most]] now).

* China's one-child policy introduced in 1979 (before the policy was instituted, China ''encouraged'' births through the 1960's), although there were ''many'' loopholes (you could have two kids if you live abroad or, presumably, as many as you want if you emigrated ''permanently''; if both parents were only children; if you've divorced and remarried; or if you're an ethnic minority). Also, [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney money helps]]. Eventually, China experienced the same "prosperity + improving women's rights = smaller families" formula as had happened in the West starting in the '60s and '70s - by the new millennium the one-child policy largely stood on its own institutional inertia. Combined with an ''equally'' inertial culture of misogyny, this led to couples aborting female fetuses and [[ParentalAbandonment abandoning baby daughters]] (who often ended up [[HappilyAdopted being adopted by Western families]]) so they could try again for a son. This naturally came back to [[HoistByHisOwnPetard bite the country in the ass]] ''hard'', as now [[MarsNeedsWomen China Desperately Needs Women]]. China moved to a two-child policy in 2016, but 35 years of the one-child policy has left its mark on China's demographics - according to the CIA, China is tied for the most male under-15 population in the world at 1.17 boys for every girl.

* Although not state-enforced (and is in fact a level of embarrassment to the government), Japan is currently undergoing a self-inflicted state of population control, with its growth rate currently being ''negative'' (as in more people die than are being born). There are several factors towards this, but at the end of the day it is as the [[{{UsefulNotes/Japan}} Useful Notes]] page [[UsefulNotes/JapanesePoliticalSystem says on the Japanese government]]: "Japan has forgotten how to make babies".

* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'': The camarilla is usually very strict with the population of vampires, so a Vampire must always ask permission from a prince if he wants to transform someone. The punishment for transforming someone without permission is death for both. The ideal of the camarilla according to some guidelines is 1 kindred for every 100,000 humans, but it usually varies.

* F. Paul Wilson's ''[=LaNague=] Confederacy'' series has this in place on EarthThatUsedToBeBetter, with a uncommon yet obvious complication to the trope; '''[[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny the population control bureau is completely and utterly corrupt.]]''' Though it ''supposedly'' enforces a "one child per parent" policy, any and all political activism is punished by sterilization under the guise of eliminating hereditary disease. Luckily, this came about ''after'' the development of CasualInterstellarTravel, and deviants are given the option to emigrate.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' has a third season episode, "The Mark of Gideon", where a planet's failure to deal with this led to ridiculously extreme overcrowding (though no problems with health or resources, apparently). The episode first aired in 1969. Kirk advocated birth control for them and offered to provide contraceptive devices (his stance was very controversial at the time, but seems [[SocietyMarchesOn blatantly obvious to most]] now).

* ''{{Series/Pandora}}'': A remote Human colony has everyone but its elders depart through a portal at age twenty five to somewhere else, which they claim is good, so the population doesn't grow to high. However, they admit to not actually knowing where this leads. Later it's learned [[spoiler:they all die by doing so]].

* A stealth example can be found in one of Creator/PiersAnthony's early novels (forget which), in which couples are only allowed to have kids if they're of different racial backgrounds. This is ostensibly intended to eliminate racism from the Earth within a generation, but in practice it's a population-control mechanism, as not everyone can find a suitable mate.

* The Combine from ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' are more thorough and have a no child per family policy, enforced by suppression fields.