Does there exist

[james_davis_nicoll]

An SF novel whose setting knowingly includes a global example of a Stage Five society?

[not interested in examples where death rates exceed birth rates for reasons due to calamities like war, famine, plague and the like; those aren't really Stage Five societies]

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The child-permit trope typically implicitly assumes that you won't get there without coercive measures. (On the other hand, the government could just be making unwarranted assumptions, like China in the real world, which is probably the model for many of them.)