Chapter One: The Shape of Things - The Meaning of Population Age Structures

Age Structure, Security and Development

In addition to describing a new typology of population age structures, The Shape of Things to Come analyzes how countries in each age structure type experienced three critical aspects of the development process at the end of the twentieth century. The three measures selected—civil conflict (hostilities within a country's borders in which at least one party is a state actor and at least 25 people are killed annually), economic growth and level of democracy—are just a few of the many factors that contribute to a country's development and the well-being of its residents. These three happen to offer high-quality data and a demonstrated relationship to population dynamics, but other measures of development are equally intriguing.⁹ Age structures' influence on a state's security, democracy and development is significant and quantifiable. Previous research has linked the incidence of civil conflict to the share of young people in a population.¹⁰ Based on this report's classification, countries with the most youthful age structures are statistically much more likely to have experienced civil conflict in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Countries with older age structures have historically been more peaceful. In the 1990s alone, countries with a very young age structure were more than three times more likely to experience conflict than countries with a mature age structure. The particular economic challenges faced by developing countries with high rates of population growth are well-documented. Population growth increases the pressures on a country's natural resources and demands for social spending, and reduces or negates the scale of improvements in national income.¹¹ Aging countries experience their own economic challenges as fewer working-age adults must support higher numbers of elderly citizens and taxation revenue shrinks. Economic growth rates vary among age structure categories, with highest rates of economic expansion among countries with very young and transitional age structures. The high rates of growth experienced by countries with a transitional age structure may be due to the rapid demographic changes they are undergoing.

Finally, countries with very young age structures have historically had a nearly 90 percent probability of autocratic or only partially democratic governance, while the majority of countries with transitional and mature age structures are full democracies.

The likelihood of democratic governance increases markedly with each successive age structure type, and increases especially between countries with a youthful and transitional age structure. Democracy does not equate to good governance, but such measures of political freedom can be important to donors in deciding where and how to invest in developing countries.

It is important to highlight two caveats of this research. First, while the results suggest that countries with younger age structures are more likely to experience challenges regarding their stability, development and governance, this does not mean that age structures are direct or unique causes of these challenges. Many other political, economic, environmental and geographic factors are at play in complex relationships. Also, some age structures—particularly the most aged, with very large proportions of people over age 60—have not yet materialized. So far, countries with a relatively large share of older adults remain generally peaceful, stable and high-income. The absence of current statistical evidence does not preclude future problems among age structures that have yet to develop.

The Impact of Policies and Programs

At the beginning of the 21st century, the range of contemporary population age structures and the extent of their interplay with economics and domestic politics are broader than ever before. The demographic changes that have created this array of age structures do not happen automatically. In many cases, they have been inspired by national and regional policies. Such policies can have either a passive effect on demographics—as in the case of efforts to scale up educational and economic opportunities and build more housing—or an active effect—as in the case of encouraging or discouraging immigration.¹²

Public policies are often purposefully meant to reshape the population profile. Historically this has been done through rights-based approaches such as national family planning programs and expanded social welfare systems as well as more coercive methods such as financial incentives to increase or decrease fertility, and even forced sterilization or China's restrictive one-child policy. In sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, attention has been focused on rapid growth in the numbers of children and adolescents in an environment with inadequate educational and health infrastructure, and a dearth of teachers and jobs. Although life expectancies have lengthened and fertility rates have declined across the developing world in recent decades, epidemic diseases continue to decimate the most vulnerable—particularly women and children—while hundreds of millions of couples lack access to contraceptive services. Many countries, often with the assistance of international partners, have implemented state-supported voluntary family planning programs that provide affordable contraception, counseling and related reproductive health care. They hope that these programs, along with efforts to increase girls' educational attainment, will help instigate a voluntary shift to small families, as they have in other developing countries.

Recently, in the industrialized countries in Europe and East Asia, policymakers have been engaged in addressing just the opposite issue—fertility rates that have declined to precipitously low levels. In response, governments have implemented a spate of incentives to encourage childbearing, such as financial bonuses and subsidized day care.¹³ These inducements to childbearing have had, in recent decades, little quantifiable impact on fertility rates.¹⁴ Many observers attribute these ongoing low fertility rates to the tension between women's professional advancement in these societies and their continued traditional role in family life, in which they are often expected to assume the majority of child care and elder care responsibilities.

Summary Point

Countries with more favorable age structures are generally more peaceful and democratic, allowing governments to better meet the needs of their people. An adverse age structure, in contrast, presents challenges when national resources are insufficient to improve economic and social welfare. Countries that progress along the demographic transition—changing from high rates of mortality and fertility to smaller families and longer lives—generally demonstrate more favorable age structures. Shifts in a country's position on the demographic transition can occur rapidly and can be dramatically influenced by government policies and programs.

Policy Recommendation

Policies and programs that result in progress along the demographic transition—such as access to family planning and sexual and reproductive health care and girls' education—should be designed, funded and prioritized in a context of individual rights. The European Union, for example, has set the following objectives for its population assistance in developing countries: to "secure the right of women, men, adolescents to good reproductive and sexual health; enable women, men and adolescents to have access to a comprehensive range of safe and reliable reproductive and sexual health care; reduce maternal mortality rates."¹⁵ Governments and international policymakers should consider the position along the demographic transition of their own countries and others of strategic interest. Given their country's mortality and fertility rates, they should evaluate changes that might result in a more favorable age structure.