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

[thespian.livejournal.com]

but Stage Five doesn't have an intrinsic goal; James' question didn't exclude stability, parenting goals, eugenics, or other persona-driven/societally driven/government driven things, merely various tragedies and calamities.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

But Stage Five *is* about quiet shrinkage, which those societies don't have. Beta's at Stage Four or Six.

(or, based on guessed author knowledge, naturally at Stage Three but coerced into Stage Four)