Villagers will not breed unless there is a player is closer than 32 blocks, except when in spawn chunks

Does this also happen in 1.15.2?

in 1.16RC1

Tested just now to double check, in 1.15.2 I was able to get the breeder to work with a distance of 200 blocks.  Tested outside of spawn - I can test spawn breeding if needed.

Went back and retested to give complete info on this.   NOTE:  All the initial villagers in the breeders were spawned in with a spawn egg.

For my testing, and since i didn't know exactly when it happened, I started with 1.16 Pre 7 and this issue was present.  I tested it FIRST by updating the world each time and retesting with the carried over villagers AND fresh villagers both in that snapshot.  With a player 200 blocks away from each, villagers would have babies in the  spawn chunks, but not in non-spawn chunks.  I updated this same world and tested through the 1.16RC1 and got the same result each time.  The "broken" thing.

THEN I tested the 1.16RC1 in a completely fresh world, and did NOT get that result.   Babies were born in BOTH spawn chunks and far from spawn with the player 200 blocks away from them.

For a final test, I opened another fresh world in 1.15.2  had the villagers make some babies.

THEN I upgraded the 1.15.2 world directly to the 1.16RC1, and babies were born in both areas (spawn and 400 blocks away from spawn with a player at the 200 block distance, between them) - so things worked as in 1.15.2. 

Something happens in one of those other snapshots that messes things up. 

In this final test it was even the exact same villagers carried over from 1.15.2 to 1.16RC1. 

So the only players who will have problems with villagers exhibiting this issue will be those who have upgraded to the snapshots between the major releases.

Okay, thank you for that extensive testing. In that case, chances are this is not a valid bug since it only happens if you've played in snapshots.

A potential fix: Try to optimise the world, including "erase cached data", that may solve the issue.