No, it was more stupid than that. The elite males were sterile because of something that the military released. Younger, less elite males were still fertile but did not have access to fertile women.
I remember the whole thing was really lame. I was a big science fiction fan back then and I thought that one would be something...different in science fiction. Nope. It was just dumb. Nowadays, I’d stop reading probably a quarter of the way into a book like that. They seldom redeem themselves in later chapters.