Youth Bulge Options - A Demographic Theory of War | Gunnar Heinsohn

Today approximately 44 percent of the world’s 7.2 billion people are under 24 years old - and 26 percent are under 14. A staggering 82 percent live in less developed regions of the world – primarily sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Currently, the global median age is 29.2 years, a sharp contrast to Europe, for example, where the median age is 41. Of the 20 states with the lowest median ages worldwide, 18 are in sub-Saharan Africa. The UN predicts that the median age will rise to 42 years by the century’s end, and with it the world’s population will increase to 10.9 billion people. Developing and least developed countries have the highest fertility rates and many are expected to triple in population by 2100. The populations of Burkina Faso, Malawi, Niger, Mali, Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia are predicted to increase by 500%. In these countries demographic pressure is already responsible for food scarcity, water scarcity, malnutrition, and disease. 

The Youth Bulge Theory attempts to explain and to predict social conflict, migration, conquest and war, and was first introduced by the CIA in 1995 (The Demographic Backdrop to Ethnic Conflict: A Geographic Overview). Youth bulge specifically refers to a disproportionate percentage of a state population being between the ages of 15 and 24 years old. But the main point of the Youth Bulge Theory is that an excess in especially young adult male population predictably leads to social unrest, war and terrorism, as the third and fourth sons that find no prestigious positions in their existing societies rationalize their impetus to compete by religion or political ideology. 

In his study Söhne und Weltmacht (Sons and World Power: Terror in the Rise and Fall of Nations; 2003) German genocide expert Gunnar Heinsohn investigated family size in various societies in relation to the frequency of violent conflict since 1500 A.D. He concluded, that the presence of large numbers of young men in nations that have experienced population explosions — all searching for respect, work, sex and meaning — tend to turn into violent countries and become involved in wars. Heinsohn’s demographic materialism is not concerned with the absolute size of populations, but rather with the share of teenagers and young men. If the population under the age of 20 becomes 40% or more compared to the total, society is facing a youth bulge. Serious problems start when families begin to produce three, four or more sons.  Faced with limited resources, the surplus sons' competition for power and prestige does only leave six options: #1 Violent Crime, #2 Civil War, #3 Revolution, #4 Emigration, #5 Genocide, and #6 War of Conquest or Colonization.  
  

This is a man's world:
Somali surplus sons warming up for option #2.

Youth bulge can be seen as one factor among many in explaining social unrest and uprisings in society. But Heinsohn essentially claims that most historical periods of social unrest are lacking external triggers (such as rapid climatic changes or other catastrophic changes of the environment). Even most genocides can be readily explained as a result of a built-up youth bulge, including European colonialism, 20th-century fascism, the rise of Communism during the Cold War, the Arab Spring, and ongoing conflicts such as in Somalia, South Sudan, Central African Republic or in Mali. Since more than a decade Heinsohn keeps warning Western politicians about the too many angry young men outside the Euro-American world today — above all, too many Muslim young men in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. He considers them one of the principal threats to the West in the first quarter of the 21st century, and illustrates this also in the recent examples of Afghanistan and Iraq: Since 1950, Iraqi fathers of all ethnic and religious groups have sired, on the average, three to four sons. They produced a youth bulge. Saddam Hussein canalized this youth bulge in the options #4 to #6 (genocide, war of conquest, numerous Iraqis went into exile). Following Saddam's removal from power the competition for positions of power was transformed into a civil war (option #2) that is being driven by a massive wave of sons. It may not be easy to recognize the current violence as a civil war, because the Americans and their allies are fighting on one of the sides. But the fact that this was a civil war would become clear through its continuation once the US at her allies withdraw. The same phenomenon could be seen — according to Heinsohn — in Afghanistan (see video clip HERE) where the enormous surplus of sons could never be absorbed, in spite of the recruitment of large numbers of police and military personnel. War would therefore inevitably continue in one way or another even after the withdrawal of Western troops.

The Fading American Dream | Trends in Absolute Income Mobility since 1940

Raj Chetty et al. (NBER Working Paper No. 22910 | Dec 2016) - One of the defining features of the “American Dream” is the ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents. When children are asked to assess their economic progress, they frequently compare their own standard of living to that of their parents. 

Such measures of absolute income mobility – the fraction of children earning or consuming more than their parents – are also often the focus of policy makers when judging the degree of economic opportunity in the U.S. 

Around 90% of children born in 1940 across the entire income distribution earned more than their parents did at age 30. That percentage dropped each decade, with only about 50% of children born in 1980 earning more than their parents. The likelihood that children at age 30 had a higher inflation-adjusted income than their parents did when they were the same age has been dropping over the last several decades.

An Aging World | Population Age 65+ in 2015 and 2050

Source: US Census

The social and economic implications of an aging population are becoming increasingly apparent in many industrialized nations around the globe. With populations in places such as North America, Western Europe and Japan aging more rapidly than ever before, policymakers are confronted with several interrelated issues, including a decline in the working-age population, increased health care costs, unsustainable pension commitments and changing demand drivers within the economy. These issues could significantly undermine the high living standard enjoyed in many advanced economies. 

As of December 2015, people 65 or older account for more than 20% of the total population in only three countries: Germany, Italy and Japan. This figure is expected to rise to 13 countries by 2020. A rapidly aging population means there are fewer working-age people in the economy. This leads to a supply shortage of qualified workers, making it more difficult for businesses to fill in-demand roles. An economy that cannot fill in-demand occupations faces adverse consequences, including declining productivity, higher labor costs, delayed business expansion and reduced international competitiveness. In some instances, a supply shortage may push up wages, thereby causing wage inflation and creating a vicious cycle of price/wage spiral.

Japan is home to the oldest citizenry in the world, with 26.3%
of its population being 65 years of age or older. The population
aged 15 to 64 fell by 4% between 2000 and 2010 (World Bank).

To compensate, many countries look to immigration to keep their labor forces well supplied. While countries such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom are attracting more highly skilled immigrants, integrating them into the workforce can be a challenge because domestic employers may not recognize immigrant credentials and work experience, especially if they were obtained in countries outside of North America, Western Europe and Australia.

Given that demand for health care rises with age, countries with rapidly aging populations must allocate more money and resources to their health care systems. With health care spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) already high in most advanced economies, it is difficult to increase spending while ensuring care improves and other social needs do not deteriorate in the case of publicly funded or government-administered health care systems. Additionally, the health care sector in many advanced economies faces similar issues, including labor and skills shortages, increased demand for home care and the need to invest in new technologies. All of these cost escalators make it more difficult for existing systems to handle the increased prevalence of chronic diseases, let alone sufficiently address the needs of large and growing senior populations. 

Countries with large elderly populations depend on smaller pools of workers in which to collect taxes to pay for higher health costs, pension benefits and other publicly funded programs. This is becoming more common in advanced economies where retirees live on fixed incomes with much smaller tax brackets than workers. The combination of lower tax revenue and higher spending commitments on health care, pension and other benefits is a major concern for advanced industrialized nations. Source: Investopedia. See also HERE

Demographics as Destiny

Business Insider (Nov 30, 2015) - What the size of the world's workforce will be like in a decade is well predictable, since the future workers have already been born. Demographics have long been a key determinant of potential growth rates, but the change in the global population over the next few years is unprecedented. Japan's population started to shrink in the mid-1990s and Germany's started shrinking around the year 2000, but the world's most populous country, China, is now seeing its working-age population shrink for the first time. Though the overall global population will continue to grow for some time yet, the growth of the working-age population is slowing down pretty much everywhere. That's relevant for a bundle of reasons. Around the world there will be fewer workers to support a growing number of retirees. But it also has some economists expecting significant pressure on wages.

The sea of red and pink across the advanced world means contraction, no growth,
or slow growth. Only in a belt of the developing world (in Africa particularly)
is there any substantial expansion coming by 2020. Credits: HSBC (Nov 2015)
Enlarge

If employers have to fight for a group of workers that is growing more slowly, or even declining, they will need to encourage people to move, and their labour will be more valuable. Some countries, like Japan, Russia, and parts of Europe, have already entered the stage that the rest of the world is going into — and they've struggled with it. In Japan, slowing economic growth has made the county's ever-expanding pile of public debt more and more difficult to deal with, and the working-age population has already declined by 11.1% in the past 20 years. Smaller populations mean less demand and less potential output. More retirees relative to the number of working-age people means more fiscal pressure: greater expenditure on healthcare and less tax income. Globally, although working-age populations are still growing, HSBC expects global potential growth to be 0.6ppt lower per year over the next decade compared with the past decade given these demographic changes. Not great news for heavily indebted economies (see also HERE).

The Demographic Crash of Civilizations

The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to the latest UN-World Population Report. However, the most important development of the twenty-first century is likely to be the great extinction of peoples, nations, cultures and civilizations. The so called ‘developed world’ is failing to attend to the most elementary task of any successful civilization: raising children. Civilization, culture, social harmony and economic prosperity rest upon the indispensable pre-condition of simple physical existence. The failure to reproduce renders all other achievements irrelevant. 

Prosperity, war, birth control, decadence, exploitation, austerity, abortion
and degradation reflected in the age structure of the German population 1910,
1970, 2009 and 2060 (HERE)

Take Germany for an example: The total population counts some 82 million, the current fertility rate is 1.43 and keeps declining. Out of the 82 million, some 17 million have a recent ‘immigrant background’, some 22 million are pensioners. Germany's impressive ‘work force’ still counts some 40 million, while the neoliberal gulag of the Schroeder-Merkel regime produced an impoverished human junk heap of 11 to 18 million people. Eight million adults between 18 and 65 of age are unable to sustain themselves, are either jobless or working-poor, trapped in exploitive lease labor contracts, One-Euro-Jobs, part-times jobs, mini-jobs, and other odd Hartz-schemes. Half a million Germans are homeless, many of them children. Organized slavery entertained by the remaining tax payers. The average income laborer tributes two thirds of his gross income to a ruthless government that dished out 400 billion Euro to zombie-banks, and rips-off 100 million Euro every day to pay interest for the ‘public debt’. In this environment around 650,000 children are born each year (one third with 'immigrant background'), as compared to 840,000 yearly deaths, giving an annual shortfall of about 200,000. In other words, while over-aging and impoverishing dramatically, Germany loses the equivalent of a mid-sized city each and every year. In fact official German projections indicate that the total population will shrink to between 65 and 74 million by 2060, depending on annual net migration of 100,000 to 400,000. Obviously, the derailed reproduction of the natives (one out of three women never bears children; some 200,000 abortions every year; several hundred thousand homosexuals; etc.), along with genocidal immigration policies, population reduction and population replacement will essentially extinguish the historic German nation within this century. This general trend and time frame equally apply to almost all other European nations.

The all season disaster recipe from the Pentagon's cookbook:
NATO-engineered regime changes and civil wars, stimulated mass migration and
ensuing colonization of global venture lumpen-proletariat and refugees amongst
30 million jobless and 120 million poor native Europeans (HERE + HERE + HERE)

Today the global average fertility rate is 2.3, and 80% of the world population lives in countries where women have on average fewer than 3 children. This means the global fertility rate is barely higher than the replacement fertility, and the increase of the world population is primarily due to the increasing length of life. In 1960 China’s fertility rate was 6.1. Now it has dropped to 1.6. In Iran, the fertility rate in 1985 was 6.3; now it is down to 1.9. In Thailand, the fertility rate was 6.14 in 1955, 3.92 in 1985, and is 1.49 today. The problem with the ‘developed world’ is not only that it is broke but that it is old and barren. Fertility rates are mostly way below replacement levels, many nations are over-aged and have reached the demographic point of no return. Globally the lowest fertility rates occur in the most modernized areas of Asia: China (1.55), Japan (1.40), South Korea (1.25), Taiwan (1.11), Hong Kong (1.04), Macau (0.91), and Singapore (0.80). Extinction level rates are also prevalent among Southern European countries and former Soviet states: Portugal (1.52), Spain (1.48), Italy (1.42), Greece (1.41), Poland (1.33), Ukraine (1.30), etc.

In Africa, children under age 15 account for 41% of the population in 2015 and young persons aged 15 to 24 for a further 19%. Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia, which have seen greater declines in fertility, have smaller percentages of children (26 and 24 %) and similar percentages of youth (17 and 16%). In total, these three regions are home to 1.7 billion children and 1.1 billion young persons in 2015.
 

Source: UN DESA

Source: CIA World Factbook

Source: CIA World Factbook