April 4, 2007 Very Young Populations Contribute to Strife, Study Concludes By CELIA W. DUGGER Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Congo have all suffered horrors brought on by disastrous governance and violent conflict. But they, and many of Africa’s poorest countries, have something else in common: very young populations. While it is not clear exactly how the age of a population contributes to strife, research by Population Action International 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. In poor countries with rapidly growing populations, intense competition for education, jobs and land among the young contributes to discontent and makes it easier for rebel groups to recruit, said Elizabeth Leahy, the primary author of a new report for Population Action, a nonprofit group in Washington. William L. Nash, a retired Army major general who now directs Center for Preventive Action of the Council on Foreign Relations, said: “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 is to reduce the birthrates and the mortality rates of infants and younger children, according to Population Action, which hopes its research will improve contraception programs, education for girls and health services for children and pregnant women. “The budget realities are such that unless you can show how your programs help achieve larger ends — security, development, poverty reduction, democracy — traditional rationales for humanitarian assistance aren’t enough,” said Tod J. Preston, a senior adviser at the group. In a December 2005 report titled “More Than Humanitarianism,” a Council on Foreign Relations task force with bipartisan leadership called population a neglected area of American policy, one that could help lower the odds of conflict. Population Action’s report, “The Shape of Things to Come,” features Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with 132 million people and a major supplier of oil to the United States, as an example of the strategic risks posed by youthful, volatile nations plagued by corruption, instability and poverty. Rebels there, enraged by the distribution of oil revenues, have attacked the industry, which is important to rich nations. In Nigeria, almost three quarters of the population is under 30. Birthrates are very high, at more than five children per woman. Less than half the women have attended school and fewer than one in 10 use modern contraception. A fifth of children die before they turn 5 — a factor specialists say encourages couples to have more children to ensure that some survive. Almost a billion people live in countries where birthrates average at least four children per woman, among them, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan. Those countries need help to improve infant and child survival and the educational status of women, to reduce population pressures and to become more stable, the report says. If nothing changes, the authors say, the populations of such countries will double in 35 years. Advocates at Population Action are critical of deep cuts in international family planning programs in the Bush administration’s 2008 budget proposal, but a Democratic-controlled Congress is likely to reverse them, as the Republican-controlled Congress did last year. The advocates acknowledged that the administration’s efforts to increase financing of programs to combat AIDS and malaria are likely to help prevent the deaths of many children — another goal. The group’s researchers found that some countries that have aggressively pursued family planning programs have significantly changed their age structures in a relatively brief span of 25 years. The report cites Iran as an example. Since the 1990s, Iran has made modern contraceptives available free at public clinics. Births are down to two children per woman, from six and a half at the time of the 1979 revolution. 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.” Home * World * U.S. * N.Y. / Region * Business * Technology * Science * Health * Sports * Opinion * Arts * Style * Travel * Jobs * Real Estate * Automobiles * Back to Top Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company * Privacy Policy * Search * Corrections * RSS * First Look * Help * Contact Us * Work for Us * Site Map