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Analysis: The Battle of the 'Youth Bulge'

Council on Foreign Relations

April 27, 2007
Prepared by: Lionel Beehner

Societies with high birthrates are prone to conflict, demographers find. That is especially true when there are a disproportionate number of young men between the ages of fifteen and thirty (NYT). The reasons are multifold: This “youth bulge” results in a large reservoir of potential recruits to radical organizations, as this new Backgrounder outlines. It helps explain the surge in Taliban recruitment in South Asia, the presence of militant groups like MEND in the Niger Delta, and the ongoing tensions in the Palestinian territories. Between 1970 and 1999, 80 percent of the world’s civil conflicts occurred in countries where 60 percent or more of the population was under the age of thirty, according to a new report by Population Action International. Countries most prone to youth-bulge-related unrest are in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa, where child soldiers are prevalent.

Another theory, advanced by the German social scientist Gunnar Heinsohn, is that youths in large numbers—particularly second or third sons—are prone to violence because they are driven by social advancement, ambition, and a yearning for respectability. “Young men start fighting for prestige and standing, positions their society simply can’t provide in sufficient numbers,” writes Jonas Attenhofer in the Jerusalem Post. This theory debunks the “clash of civilizations” school of thought to explain the spasms of religiously motivated violence in the Middle East. “If you follow this argument to its logical end point, then the religion of Islam, the focus of so much contemporary strategic discussion, is a great red herring,” writes Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times. That said, of the twenty-seven nations with the largest populations of idle youth, thirteen are Muslim.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.