THE FUTURE FACES OF WAR: POPULATION AND NATIONAL SECURITY

Op-Ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer

2011-09-03T17:17:00.000-07:00

Interview with Zunia.org on population and development

2011-07-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Sciubba Discusses Population and International Development

Zunia: What are some demographic trends international development organizations need to take into account as they develop their future plans and strategies?

Sciubba: One of the biggest challenges to economic growth will continue to be large, young, and growing populations. A large number of youthful dependents strains individual family resources--diverting time that could be spent on paid labor--and strains the educational system at the societal level. An even bigger challenge, though, is creating jobs for large cohorts of youth entering working ages. Development organizations should also be mindful of the relationship between a youthful age structure and civil conflict, and the challenges civil conflict poses to development. For example, countries mired in civil conflict have a hard time attracting foreign investment. Forty-six percent of Afghanistan's population is under the age of 15, meaning that the country has decades of challenges ahead.

Zunia: You mention in your book that one of the most important trends during the next several decades will be the growing divide in age structure between the aging industrialized great powers and the youthful industrializing powers. About 98 percent of the growth in world population during the next several decades will take place in less developed countries. What are some of the implications of this divide?

Sciubba: On an international level, it is likely that global power will become more diffuse as the aging, industrialized states face declining economic growth (or no growth) and the accompanying expense of paying for and staffing a large and strong military. Those countries in the demographic “sweet spot,” those with relatively larger numbers of working age compared to elderly dependents, are already demanding a greater role in international politics. States like China, Brazil, and India have a growing capacity to help with global peace and development efforts, and are seeking a greater role in these endeavors. I think global institutions are going to have to reform to be more inclusive of these rising powers, or run the risk of becoming irrelevant.

Zunia: We have seen a wave of protests in North Africa and the Middle East recently. In many of these countries half or more of the population is below 30. Is there a link between a youthful age structure and conflict?

Sciubba: There is a correlation between youthful age structures and outbreak of conflict, and for some researchers the protests in North Africa and the Middle East were no surprise given the high proportion of young adults. Within political demography, though, I think we have some ground to cover with causation. Our theories tell us a bit about why these protests are happening, particularly those theories that look at the importance of economic exclusion and lack of political expression. The age structures of the countries where protests have broken out are somewhat varied, and so obviously demography is not the only dynamic at play. For policy makers to use the findings of political demography we need to do a better job of creating replicable research and robust theories those policy makers can use to project the likelihood of larger trends in conflict and democracy. In other words, we have a long way to go in understanding the role demography has played in those conflicts.

Zunia: What are some challenges and opportunities presented by the growing urbanization trends worldwide?

Sciubba: There is a tendency to view all demographic trends as inherently negative, probably because it is more interesting, but urbanization has created many opportunities for access to health care, education, and jobs. The world is now more than 50 percent urban (though the definition of “urban” is not perhaps what we all would think of) and will only grow more urban over the next several decades. Urban areas are generally the most prosperous areas in a country and so this should be a welcome trend. Of course, sometimes the pace of urban growth is faster than the government’s ability to accommodate the population influx, and poor planning has resulted in slums in many developing countries. This is a big challenge for developing countries, but one that they are working on and making strides in. Brazil and India, as just two examples, are seeing major turnarounds in some of their slum areas. The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan shows us another challenge of urbanization. Urbanization concentrates wealth, physical assets, and people, and thus makes these areas vulnerable to destruction by natural means, or by deliberate attack.

Zunia: How can governments and civil society help to shape the effects of demographic change?

Sciubba: In military circles, the role of government in demographic change is a sensitive subject. I still think it is still a worthwhile subject to discuss because the places of greatest interest to the US—and arguably the international community—are those with very high total fertility rates. Given the connection between young age structures and civil conflict, governments and civil society should turn their attention to non-military, long-term solutions like family planning. Unmet need for family planning is as high as 215 million women worldwide. As mentioned, 46 percent of Afghanistan’s population is under the age of 15, and establishing peace and stable governance there will be difficult for the foreseeable future. Education and access to contraception will help change the age structure and open opportunities for youth over the long run.

The Specter of 7 Billion: Should We Be Scared?

2011-05-04T20:15:00.000-07:00

The UN announced this week that the world will welcome its seven billionth inhabitant on Halloween this year. A world of seven billion was unthinkable a century ago, when total world population was about as big as India is today. I was sitting in a Chinese history class in college the day world population hit 6 billion. This occasion is seared into my memory because my professor delivered the news while wearing a black armband to mark what she saw as the travesty of world population growth. After her lecture, I left class thinking there wasn’t room for one more person, yet here we are just over a decade later with another billion.

What I’ve come to realize in the interim is that although this number is astounding, how many people are on the planet is far less important for issues of development and conflict than where and who these people are. Meaning, where population growth and decline is concentrated—either at the country level or within states—and the level of education, religion, age, or other identity characteristics of individuals are the real links between demography and political, social, or economic outcomes.

Where
One place where population growth is central to development and security is Afghanistan. The median age in Afghanistan is only 16 years and each woman on average has about 6 children in her lifetime. These numbers mean that over 46 percent of Afghanistan’s population is under the age of 15. As the US plots its exit strategy for Afghanistan, they must also consider the strains that population growth there will continue to place on infrastructure, education, health care, and even governance. Countries with a young age structure like Afghanistan are on average about two and half times more likely to experience the onset of civil conflict than older countries. And even if fertility in Afghanistan falls in the future, those large groups ages 0-5 will require a lot of jobs one day. Experiences in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere so far in 2011 show us what happens when these expectations go unmet.

Who
When groups within countries grow at different rates through natural increase or migration, conflicts over access to economic resources, political power, or cultural influence can arise. One area of the world that has seen tensions over differential growth is Europe. European states have some of the lowest fertility in the world. In stark contrast to Afghanistan, Italy’s median age is over 43 years and over the period 2005-2010 each woman on average had only 1.38 children. Already, over a quarter of the population is above age 60. In light of population aging, Italians, like many other Europeans, perceive that their way of life is under threat by the growth of foreign born or ethnic minorities. One illustration of tension over identity there is the recent outrage over refugees from North Africa, which the anti-immigrant Northern League political party is using to its advantage.

Global trends
Bringing the where and who together, the UN data show that the divide between the developed and developing world continues to grow. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the fastest growing regions in the world, and the UN projects that the population will double by 2045, even if the sub-continent is able to reduce fertility from a current average of almost 5 children per woman to just over 3. If fertility stays at its current level, the continent’s population will double a decade earlier, reaching over 1.7 billion by 2035. On the other side of the divide, 42 percent of the world’s population, mostly the developed world, lives in low-fertility countries. Given the ties between fertility and age structure, and age structure and conflict and development, we can project that the economies of very low- and high-fertility countries, which mostly have very mature or very young age structures, will face challenges meeting the needs of their dependents, while those of the middle ages—like many rising powers—will experience high economic growth and a peace dividend. How these shifts translate to global power, peace, and prosperity will be something to watch.

Population and National Security in 5 min or less

2011-04-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

For those of you teaching on population and national security, this 5-minute video I taped with the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center may be helpful.

Video of book launch

2011-03-25T12:26:00.000-07:00

Watch the video of my book launch at the Wilson Center here. Features commentary by Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks and Environmental Change and Security Program Director Geoff Dabelko.

Somalia's Scoundrels

2011-03-06T07:13:00.000-08:00

Though youth have been in large part responsible for the recent revolutions calling for representative democracy across the Middle East, friend and colleague Art Carden recently posed a question on his Forbes.com blog that made me think about the darker side of a youthful age structure. His question--Who should be responsible for stopping Somali pirates--is a good one, since the pirates interrupt commerce, cost their victims millions, and have taken the lives of many, including four Americans in late February. But as I told Art, I think any answer to this question must account for the underlying context within which the piracy takes place.

No matter what the international community does to increase patrols of the Gulf of Aden, or pump money into strengthening Somali governance, until Somalia’s population growth rate slows and jobs are created fast enough to meet extraordinary demand, crime is the most viable way to earn a living for the 66 percent of adults who are unemployed in urban areas (and 41 percent in rural areas). Young adults ages 15-29 are 48% of the adult population, a percentage only 2% higher than Egypt (though Somalia’s life expectancy is much lower, which affects their age structure).

It is no coincidence that these unstable states have similar youth proportions. Many flavors of civil conflict or insecurity are correlated with a young age structure, from protest, to crime, to outright armed rebellion, as I highlight in Chapter 2 of my book. What’s different about Somalia is that, unlike most states of North Africa, fertility there is still extremely high, over 6 children per woman on average. Youth—young men in particular—are the most likely age group to engage in crime, and indeed, Somali pirates are generally young, uneducated, and unemployed. The Somali government--even if they wanted to--does not have the resources to create jobs or pay off the population as many oil-rich states in North Africa did. Even there, though, this strategy led to bloated public sectors that closed out job creation in the private sector. The answer, then, is not simply to ask the government to create jobs—a strategy that only temporarily kept Egyptian youth employed—but rather to create an environment conducive to a flourishing private sector.

Even if Somalia’s fertility rapidly declines soon, it will take decades before the age structure matures to the point where each generation that enters the labor force is not significantly bigger that the preceding. A military response to Somali piracy is expensive; an inexpensive win-win solution to piracy is family planning.

Interview on population and conflict in the Middle East

2011-03-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a 6 minute interview I did last Monday on the role of demography in the conflicts across the Middle East.

The Middle East's Demographic Destiny

2011-02-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

The so-called “arc of revolution” sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa has some demographers feeling smug. In Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, and Lebanon the population ages 15-29—a key group for demographers—is very large, about 41-50 percent of all adults ages 15-59. No matter where you’re born, this life period is significant because during this time young adults expect to finish their education, get a job, get married, maybe start a family, and have some say in the way they are governed. As many have noted, the problem in each of these countries is that the desires of young adults are being dashed as they are shut out of economic, political, and even social opportunities. The result is all over the headlines.

Aside from structural failures like corruption and inattention of politicians to creating jobs, why are young people so disadvantaged? The answer lies in demography. Opportunities for young adults are limited in these countries because of what demographers refer to as “cohort crowding,” a situation that results when an age group, in Tunisia’s case those ages 25-29, is significantly larger than the preceding age group. Generally, jobs cannot be created fast enough to keep pace with this demographic bump, so those in the large cohorts are “crowded” out of the labor market. This situation turns into protest and violence when youth from large cohorts fall short of the living standards of preceding generations, which are smaller. In 2009 Pew Global Attitudes survey, 50 percent of respondents ages 18-29 in Egypt said they thought children born today would be worse off than their parents. In Jordan and Lebanon, 38 and 40 percent, respectively, of respondents had a similarly depressed attitude.

This attitude is common in the Middle East, where cohort crowding is particularly acute Decades of free and open admission to university, rent control, progressive taxation, and universal health care led to a bloated public sector in many states and created barriers to growth in the private sector. For example, Egypt’s system of guaranteed public employment for all college graduates encouraged education but also led to a glut of well-educated job seekers. Depending on the rigidity of the labor market, youth may be the first ones let go in an economic downturn, or have a hard time competing for scarce jobs when their skills and experience fall short of those of older generations. Increasing youth unemployment, costly housing, and opportunities to continue education have become barriers to marriage, creating yet another source of frustration. Because the cost of marriage is so prohibitive, less than 50 percent of Middle Eastern men are married by their late twenties, a significant decline since the 1990s.

There are plenty of generations of youth who are marginalized but who do not rebel. What accounts for the difference? And why are these protests breaking out now? One factor that is likely very important in recent cases is what demographers refer to as the “cohort effect,” a term that describes how certain generations are shaped by their particular place in history. Across the Middle East today, though there is some variation in demographic profiles among the region (some countries are slightly younger than others) similar uprisings are occurring. The sense of collective discontent and the sense that protest is a valid and potentially successful way to address those grievances is no doubt fueled by social media and the internet. To put the age structure and cohort perspectives together, we might say that demography primes the pump, but historical circumstances start the flow of revolution.

The death of Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year old Tunisian who set himself afire in front of a government building on December 17, 2010, is symbolic of the problems young adults face in the Middle East today. It is not a stretch to see Mr. Bouazizi’s act of self-immolation as a desperate response to a feeling of powerlessness against the government, a sentiment shared by many young adults across the Middle East. States with high proportions of youth need to focus on policies that engage youth in areas where they are currently marginalized. They must provide opportunities for political expression, an economy that will utilize young workers of all skill levels, higher education, and social freedoms. All of these are scarce in a country with large proportions of young adults.

We should expect overall population age structure, stage in life, and historical cohort experiences to continue to matter in the region. Yemen’s population is projected to double by 2050 and even Saudi Arabia’s population will grow by 50 percent by 2035. As long as young adults have the desire to engage in political, social, and economic opportunities, but are crowded out of those, there is the fodder for rebellion. Even though many of the protests of today will not be successful for a range of political factors, including the response of the administrations, demography means there is a greater likelihood there will continue to be violent and intense political pull and demands from the younger generations for jobs and political representation.

Book preview on The New Security Beat

2011-02-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

The New Security Beat, the blog of The Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center, just posted a preview of the book.

What to read on demography and the Middle East

2011-02-02T11:28:00.000-08:00

I've put together a few links for recommended reading on the role of demography in the recent protests across the Middle East. Chapter 2 of my book--Youth and Youthful Age Structures--is also a great resource!!

1) Rich Cincotta's piece on The New Security Beat and subsequent replies.
2) Foreign Policy's "The Arab World's Youth Army"
3) From the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, "The Future of the Global Muslim Population" and commentary on the report.
4) From The New York Times: "Protest's Old Guard Falls in Behind the Young"
5) From Brookings, Generation in Waiting edited by Navtej Dhillon and Tarik Yousef.
6) Hilary Silver's "Social Exclusion: Comparative Analysis of Europe and Middle East Youth"
7) The UN's Arab Human Development Report 2009
8) Story from NPR in which colleagues Liz Madsen and Jack Goldstone are quoted.
9) The Demographics of Revolt by Liz Madsen

I'll keep updating as things come across my screen.

How population plays a role in Tunisia and Egypt

2011-01-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

There's a great ongoing dialogue among population experts about the role of age structure in the protests across the Middle East. See my two cents in this collection of posts: "The Age of Revolution" Demography Experts Comment on Tunisia's Shot at Democracy