An article in last week's New York Times discusses a study recently published by Population Action International (PAI) which suggests that,

… it is no simple coincidence that 80 percent of the civil conflicts that broke out in the 1970s, '80s and '90s occurred in countries where at least 60 percent of the population was under 30, and that almost 9 of 10 such youthful countries had autocratic rulers or weak democracies.

The PAI study finds one thing that is consistent among strife-ridden nations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Congo is that they all have very young populations.

William L. Nash, a retired Army major general who directs the Center for Preventive Action of the Council on Foreign Relations, says: "You've got a lot of young men. You've got a lot of poverty. You've got a lot of bad governance, and often you've got greed with extractive industries. You put all that together, and you've got the makings of trouble."

One strategy supported by PAI to counter this effect is to encourage programs that try and reduce the birthrates and the mortality rates of infants and younger children. They find that countries that have pursued voluntary family planning programs have significantly changed their age structures in a relatively brief span of 25 years. The report claims that Iran, which made modern contraceptives available free at public clinics in the early 90's has successfully ebbed the flow. Births are down to two children per woman, from six and a half at the time of the 1979 revolution. From The New York Times:

The sentences just before refer to the report…Lt. Gen. Claudia J. Kennedy, who is a member of the Population Action board and was in charge of Army intelligence when she retired in 2000, said the United States needed to focus more on efforts to improve the status of women and ease population pressures in developing countries.

"When people think reproductive issues are girlie because it involves a woman's biology, they ignore the social, political and economic impact of not paying attention to these matters," she said. "And it reflects a pervasive attitude that if it's about women, it's unimportant, but if it's about what huge weapons system to buy, that's more manly and more important."

After reading Maj. General Nash's diagnosis about what kinds of factors are the "makings of trouble," I recall an article by Anne Hendrixson that challenges scapegoating young people, especially young men, from the global south for the problems of developing nations. Hendrixson explains the youth bulge concept,

The correlation that the media makes between young men and violent uprisings popularizes the "youth bulge" concept. This concept identifies young men as a historically volatile population. It explores the idea that the presence of more than twenty percent of young people in the population signals the possibility of political rebellion and unrest.

She then diagnoses the problems with the theory,

The belief that the youth bulge represents a security threat is partially based on the idea that population pressures inevitably cause resource scarcities, which in turn force young people to compete for limited educational and employment opportunities. When governments fail to meet their needs, young people will supposedly react with violence.

In reality, a complex web of national and international political and economic forces determines the extent and availability of resources.

All this reminds me of the argument made in the recent book, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population by Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer. The authors find that a surplus of young, unmarried adult males in a population fosters security threats. These "bare branches", a Chinese expression for males who lack a spouse and offspring, are often poor, transient, uneducated and most importantly, prone to violent crime, substance abuse and collective aggression. As Betsy Hartmann states in her review of the book, this kind of analysis,

… reinforces deeply problematic gender stereotypes, but grounds much of its analysis in sociobiological explanations of difference. These in turn help to naturalize broader social and economic inequalities and pathologize migration and political resistance.

Admittedly, not all analyses of population growth fall victim to this methodology. As Hendrixson notes in her article, Henrik Urdal of Oslo's International Peace Research Institute argues that whether or not youth bulges cause political instability depends on other variables, such as intermediary regimes and economic recession. In a study of student resistance, Mark Edelman Boren considers a different analysis altogether, "Empowered through collective action, unruly students can challenge their institutions, societies, and governments; they can be tremendous catalysts for change." Certainly food for thought—enough to make us question the potentially causal relationship between youth and violence.

Editor's note: Read Elizabeth Leahy's blog on PAI's report "The Shape of Things to Come: Why Age Structure Matters to a Safer, More Equitable World."