Another day, another big new change for the upcoming My Colony v1.0.0. Prior to this update, with the rare exception of a few retired colonists, you didn't have to worry much about how old your population was. That's about to change. Starting in v1.0.0, your colonists can now make babies, and babies can't get jobs. So you will now have some unproductive mouths to feed!
The Stats window now gives you a breakdown of your current population by age group. By default, Colonists will not work until they are 18 years old, however there is going to be a new "child labor" policy you can implement to force younger kids into the workforce, at the expense of some approval from the population. I might also add a similar "work until you die" policy, where you force the elderly to work instead of retire.
Speaking of retirement, it is now based on age rather than money. By default, colonists will be leaving the workforce at age 65.
Childbirth actually changes the equation of the game a bit, as it is not impacted by your Immigration policy, and does not care about how many available houses you have. This means that at some point, you aren't even going to have to worry about immigration in order to grow your population, as the natural birth rate will take care of it. However, it takes those newborn workers until the age of 18 to enter the workforce. You also need to make sure your housing can keep up with the births. It's a lot to consider!