Global Political Demography: The Politics of Population Change

Global Political
Demography
The Politics of
Population Change
Edited by
Achim Goerres · Pieter Vanhuysse
Global Political Demography
“Political demography takes a major step forward in this volume, whose global
scope is unprecedented. The relationships among population change, immigra-
tion, ethnicity and regimes, political conflict, and revolutions are delineated with
great skill and insight. This book is filled with essential findings for all scholars
of politics and development.”
—Jack A. Goldstone, Schar School of Policy and Government,
George Mason University, USA
“The uneven pace of the demographic transition around the world is altering
the age and ethnic composition of countries. This is recasting the domestic
and international politics of the twenty-first century. Covering every continent,
Global Political Demography performs the vital task of bringing together the
world’s leading scholars of the politics of population change. They help us make
sense of the trends that are shaking the foundations of our modern world.”
—Eric Kaufmann, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
“This book is a foundational contribution to establish ‘political demography’.

The individual chapters address key areas of demographic change – including
urbanization, migration and population aging – and ask how these processes
impact politics, public policies, political behaviour, political institutions and the
political order of a country. The book overcomes the narrow view of prior
research by adopting a truly global perspective. It is not only a must-read for
scholars and students in the field, but of interest to a wider audience interested
in the global challenges posed by demographic change.”
—Michaela Kreyenfeld, Hertie School, Berlin, Germany
“This state-of-the-art and original book is much-needed at the present time of

global economic uncertainties. The focus on changes in demographic structure
and composition as a driving force shaping political and policy landscapes and
the feedback loop offer a new perspective. Its comprehensive coverage of low-,
middle- and high-income countries in all world regions and in-depth analysis of
population heterogeneity provide a holistic picture of the relationship between
population dynamics and politics for the very first time.”
—Raya Muttarak, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and
Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA,
OeAW, University of Vienna)
“This book is a tour de force. Achim Goerres and Pieter Vanhuysse provide
the first comprehensive treatment of the interplay of demography and politics
around the world over half a century. Leading researchers from each continent
analyze the many political causes and consequences of population change, from
silver populations to migration flows, from youth bulges to religions. This is a
must-read for everyone concerned about global demographic shifts and the big
forces shaping our common future.”
—Tomáš Sobotka, Vienna Institute of Demography, and Wittgenstein Centre for
Demography and Global Human Capital, Austria
Achim Goerres · Pieter Vanhuysse
Editors
Global Political
Demography
The Politics of Population Change
Editors
Achim Goerres Pieter Vanhuysse
Institut für Politikwissenschaft Department of Political Science, Danish
Universität Duisburg-Essen Institute for Advanced Study (DIAS),
Duisburg and Interdisciplinary Centre on
Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany Population Dynamics (CPOP-SAMF)
University of Southern Denmark
Odense, Denmark
ISBN 978-3-030-73064-2 ISBN 978-3-030-73065-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9
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For
Hannah, Anna, Alexander, Jana and Andrea
and in memory of
Dennis C. Spies (1981–2021)
Preface
This book is about the politics and public policies of population change
across the globe. It is our attempt to make interdisciplinary progress at
the intersection of demography and political science in order to fully
understand the breadth and pace of demographic change worldwide.
This book grew out of an idea that we tossed around at a work-
shop in Gothenburg in autumn 2015. In 2012, we had edited a volume
on the comparative politics of population ageing in advanced industrial
democracies in an attempt to make some advances in the fields of polit-
ical sociology, comparative politics, comparative political economy and
welfare state research (“Ageing Populations in Post-industrial Democ-
racies: Comparative Studies of Policies and Politics, Routledge”, Rout-
ledge). In late summer 2016, we met in Odense to sketch out the
first ideas for this book and identify suitable experts from across the
globe. Since we had been working mostly on the OECD world ourselves,
this was a steep learning experience. In 2017, we approached the Käte
Hamburger Centre for Global Cooperation Research at the University
of Duisburg-Essen with the question whether they could fund an inter-
national conference to bring together such a global group of experts.
Luckily, they were able to do so, leading to a conference that took
place on 23–24 November 2017 in Duisburg. We would like to thank
the Centre’s directors Tobias Debiel, Dirk Messner and Sigrid Quack
for supporting this project, and Matthias Schuler for administrative help
during the workshop.
vii
viii PREFACE
The book is accessible open access. The work is distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Inter-
national License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/),
which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution
and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as appropriate credit
is given to the original author(s) and the source, a link is provided to
the Creative Commons license, and any changes made are indicated. We
would like to thank the university library of Duisburg-Essen and the Inter-
disciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics at the Faculty of Business and
Social Sciences (CPOP at SAMF) of the University of Southern Denmark
for each covering half of the expenses. We also thank the University of
Duisburg-Essen for providing generous seed money to Achim Goerres
that allowed us to pay for the numerous research assistant hours.
For this volume, we wanted to adopt a wide scope across three dimen-
sions. First, we wanted not only to include population ageing as the domi-
nant driver of change in the age composition of modern societies, but
to also add an in-depth analysis of migration as a fundamental factor of
population change. Second, we wanted to expand the perspective beyond
advanced industrial democracies to cover all major macro-regions of the
world in order to develop a fuller picture of the dynamics of the politics of
population change. Third, we wanted to broaden the time period under
consideration, from 1990 to today and into the near future, up to 2040.
We thank the contributors to this edited volume for the quality of
their work and their patience. It was a demanding task for us to work
with a largely virtual community of colleagues. Our contributing authors
are currently based in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China (Hongkong),
Denmark, Germany, India, Indonesia, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain,
Uganda, the UK and the US. The book also pushed us to widen our
mental models and theoretical lenses by its truly interdisciplinary nature,
with specialists from area studies, demography, economics, geography,
political science, political economy and sociology. We learnt a lot about
various disciplinary approaches and tried to become better social scientists
on this journey.
A special thanks goes to Rich Cincotta among our contributors, who
diligently and reliably supported us with the production of country-
specific age pyramids in addition to co-authoring an excellent chapter. We
would like to thank the following truly international group of scholars for
providing feedback to one or several chapters: Anna Boucher, Philippe
Fargues, Robert Ivan Gal, Hayfat Hamidou-Schmidt, Thomas Heberer,
PREFACE ix
Takeshi Hieda, Eric Kaufmann, Achim Kemmerling, Daniel Lambach,

Paul Marx, Attila Melegh, Miquel Pellicer, Micheline van Riemsdijk, John
Sidel, Tomáš Sobotka and Marianne Ulriksen.
We thank Jonas Elis and Sebastian Krause for managing this book’s
companion, the Global Political Demography Database. Further thanks
go to Erik Wenker at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Frederik Pfeiffer
and Klaus Petersen at CPOP-SAMF, University of Southern Denmark,
and Ambra Finotello at Palgrave Macmillan.
A special thanks goes to Josra Riecke who acted as our book manager
for over a year to deal with the authors, reviewers, publishers and two
editors who were at times “snowed under” with various extraordinary
tasks, both professionally and privately.
We have both contributed equally to this volume, just as we did back
in 2012. We continue rotating the order of names in the edited volume
and in the introductory chapters, meaning that this edited volume is
Goerres/Vanhuysse (eds.) whereas the first was Vanhuysse/Goerres (eds.)
and vice versa for the introductory chapters.
The book is accompanied by a project homepage at the Open Science
Framework. The current URL is https://osf.io/xcvdh/.
The project homepage contains the Global Political Demography
Database with documentation that is free to access:
Goerres, Achim, Vanhuysse, Pieter, Krause, Sebastian and Elis, Jonas

(2020): Global Political Demography Database, current version 1.4.1,
November 2020.
The online project page also contains the online appendix with detailed
material for some of the chapters.
As we draw this project to a close in December 2020, the world is
experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2019 and that put
many lives upside down in 2020 all over the world. Whereas this book
does not analyse the impact of COVID-19 from the point of view of
political demography, we experienced vividly how this global pandemic
impacted on our global group of contributors in remarkably similar ways.
This book is about the macro-politics of population change. We dedi-
cate it to those with whom we actively experience population dynamics at
the micro-level every day:
x PREFACE
Our children, Hannah, Anna, and Alexander,

Our partner and wife, Jana and Andrea
Finally, we would like to honour our colleague and friend Dennis

C. Spies, Professor of Political Economy at Heinrich-Heine University
Düsseldorf, who passed away unexpectedly much too young (1981–
2021).
Odense, Denmark Pieter Vanhuysse

Duisburg, Germany Achim Goerres
December 2020
About This Book
This ambitious open-access book draws the big picture of how popu-
lation change interplays with politics across the world from 1990 to
2040. Leading social scientists from a wide range of disciplines discuss,
for the first time, all major political and policy aspects of population
change as they play out differently in each major world region: North and
South America; sub-Saharan Africa and the MENA region; Western and
East Central Europe; Russia, Belarus and Ukraine; East Asia; Southeast
Asia; subcontinental India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; Australia and New
Zealand. These macro-regional analyses are completed by cross-cutting
global analyses of migration, religion and poverty, and age profiles and
intra-state conflicts. From all angles, the book shows how strongly contex-
tualized the political management and the political consequences of popu-
lation change are. While long-term population ageing and short-term
migration fluctuations present structural conditions, political actors play
a key role in (mis-)managing, manipulating and (under-)planning popu-
lation change, which in turn determines how citizens in different groups
react.
xi
Contents
1 Introduction: Political Demography as an Analytical

Window on Our World 1
Pieter Vanhuysse and Achim Goerres
2 Migration in Political Demography: A Review
of Evidence 29
Ronald Skeldon
3 Youthful Age Structures and the Risks
of Revolutionary and Separatist Conflicts 57
Richard Cincotta and Hannes Weber
4 Poverty and Religious Affiliation Worldwide,
1970–2010 93
Vegard Skirbekk and Jose Navarro
5 Ageing China: The People’s Republic of China, Hong
Kong, Macao and Taiwan 117
Nele Noesselt
6 Demographic Politics in Asia’s Super-Size
Democracies: India, Bangladesh and Pakistan 141
K. S. James and Arun Balachandran
xiii
xiv CONTENTS
7 Getting Old Before Getting Rich (and not Fully

Realizing It): Premature Ageing and the Demographic
Momentum in Southeast Asia 167
Patrick Ziegenhain
8 The Oldest Societies in Asia: The Politics of Ageing
in South Korea and Japan 195
Axel Klein and Hannes Mosler
9 Demographic Change and Political Order
in Sub-Saharan Africa: How Côte d’Ivoire
and Uganda Deal with Youth Bulge and Politicized
Migration 219
Christof Hartmann and Catherine Promise Biira
10 The Maghreb Region: Waithood, the Myth of Youth
Bulges and the Reality of Frustrated Aspirations 247
Alessandra Bonci and Francesco Cavatorta
11 It Is All About the Numbers of Immigrants:
Population and Politics in Australia and New Zealand 275
Peter McDonald and Andrew Markus
12 The Politics of Demography in Unequal Societies:
Argentina and Brazil Compared 303
Diego Wachs, Vitor Goncalves Cavalcanti,
and Clara Galeazzi
13 Intergenerational Controversy and Cultural Clashes:
Political Consequences of Demographic Change
in the US and Canada Since 1990 325
Jennifer D. Sciubba
14 Population Ageing, Immigration and the Welfare
State: The Political Demography in Western Europe 351
Elias Naumann and Moritz Hess
15 The Political Demography of Missed Opportunity:
Populations and Policies in a Younger
but Faster-Ageing East Central Europe, 1990–2040 373
Pieter Vanhuysse and Jolanta Perek-Białas
CONTENTS xv
16 Combating Low Life Expectancy and Low Fertility

in Tumultuous Political Times: A Comparison
of the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus 401
Rza Kazimov and Sergei V. Zakharov
17 Epilogue: Global Political
Demography—A Depressing Outlook? 429
Stuart A. Gietel-Basten
Index 451
Contributors
Arun Balachandran Department of Sociology, University of Maryland,

College Park, MD, USA
Catherine Promise Biira Institute for Regional Integration and Devel-
opment, Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya
Alessandra Bonci Laval University, Québec, Canada
Francesco Cavatorta Laval University, Québec, Canada
Richard Cincotta The Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, Washington, DC, USA
Clara Galeazzi Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource
Governance (CEENRG) at the Land Economy Department, University
of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Stuart A. Gietel-Basten The Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, Sai Kung, Hong Kong SAR
Achim Goerres Department of Political Science, University of
Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
Vitor Goncalves Cavalcanti World Bank, Washington, DC, USA
Christof Hartmann Department of Political Science, University of
Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
xvii
xviii CONTRIBUTORS
Moritz Hess Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, Mönchenglad-

bach, Germany
K. S. James International Institute for Population Sciences, Deemed
University, Mumbai, India
Rza Kazimov Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences, Berlin,
Germany
Axel Klein Department of Political Science and the Institute of East
Asian Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
Andrew Markus Emeritus Professor, School of Philosophical, Historical
and International Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia;
Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Peter McDonald Emeritus Professor of Demography, The Australian
National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia;
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Hannes Mosler Department of Political Science and the Institute of East
Asian Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
Elias Naumann University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
Jose Navarro Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Nele Noesselt Department of Political Science, Institute of East Asian
Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
Jolanta Perek-Białas Institute of Sociology and Center for Evaluation
and Analysis of Public Policies, Jagiellonian University, Cracow and
Warsaw School of Economics, Cracow, Poland
Jennifer D. Sciubba Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, USA
Ronald Skeldon Emeritus Professor, University of Sussex, Brighton,
UK;
Honorary Professor, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Vegard Skirbekk Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Pieter Vanhuysse Department of Political Science, Danish Institute for
Advanced Study (DIAS), and Interdisciplinary Centre on Population
Dynamics (CPOP-SAMF), University of Southern Denmark, Odense,
Denmark
CONTRIBUTORS xix
Diego Wachs Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, London School of

Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Hannes Weber University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
Sergei V. Zakharov Institute of Demography (HSE IDEM), National
Research University, Moscow, Russia
Patrick Ziegenhain President University, Cikarang, Indonesia
List of Figures
Chapter 1
Fig. 1 Overview of countries covered in the book and their chapter 4
Fig. 2 Estimated turnout rates in the last national election in or just
before 2015 for young people (aged 18–29) and older
people (60+) 11
Fig. 3 The curvilinear relationship between relative elderly power
(logged) and GDP per capita (around 2015) 14
Chapter 3
Fig. 1 Population pyramids. Examples of the (U.S.) NIC’s four
age-structural phases (NIC, 2017) 62
Fig. 2 The functional forms and 0.95 confidence intervals for three
mutually exclusive categories of 4-year conflict history: RAbs
(0 conflict years over the past 4 most recent years), RImt (1
or 2 conflict years) and RPer (3 or 4 conflict years) 74
Fig. 3 The functional forms and 0.95 confidence intervals for three
mutually exclusive categories of 4-year conflict history: SAbs
(0 conflict years over the past 4 most recent years), SImt (1
or 2 conflict years) and SPer (3 or 4 conflict years) 76
Fig. 4 The proportion of states engaged in (a) revolutionary conflict
and (b) separatist conflict in each of four age-structural
categories 79
xxi
xxii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 5 The trend in the number of states engaged in revolutionary

conflict (but not intrastate separatist conflict) over seven
five-year periods (1976–1980 to 2011–2015) 87
Chapter 4
Fig. 1 a, b Absolute poverty by religion, 1970 and 2010 102
Fig. 2 a, b Absolute poverty by religion in 1970 and 2010 (in %) 104
Fig. 3 Relative Poverty by religion in 2010 105
Fig. 4 Relative poverty by religion in 2010 (in %) 105
Chapter 5
Fig. 1 Population pyramids of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong SAR,
Macao SAR 127
Chapter 6
Fig. 1 Age-sex population pyramid for Bangladesh, India
and Pakistan for 1990, 2020 and 2040 145
Fig. 2 Total Fertility Rate (TFR) across Indian States, 2016 151
Chapter 7
Fig. 1 Population Pyramids, 1990, 2020, 2040 173
Chapter 8
Fig. 1 Population pyramids, Japan and Korea 198
Fig. 2 Population by age (persons) 200
Fig. 3 Voter turnout by age in the Republic of Korea (presidential
elections, in percentage) 201
Fig. 4 Voter turnout by age in Japan (general elections,
in percentage) 201
Chapter 9
Fig. 1 Demographic trends in Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda 222
Fig. 2 Annual new job requirements for Uganda 2007–2037 227
Fig. 3 Political interest among young people in Africa (Based
on Lekalake and Gyimah-Boadi [2016]) 231
Fig. 4 Age-specific voting patterns in Côte d’Ivoire 232
Fig. 5 Age-specific voting patterns in Uganda 233
LIST OF FIGURES xxiii
Chapter 10
Fig. 1 Average annual rate of population change in comparison 250
Fig. 2 Population pyramids for Morocco and Tunisia 252
Chapter 11
Fig. 1 Age pyramids in 1990–2020–2040 in Australia and New
Zealand 276
Fig. 2 Net International Migration to Australia, 1947–2016,
numbers 280
Chapter 12
Fig. 1 Population pyramids in Argentina and Brazil 304
Fig. 2 Immigration to Argentina and Brazil in 2015, top origin
countries. In thousands 307
Fig. 3 Share of total population residing in urban areas 310
Fig. 4 Wealth and land distribution in Latin America 313
Fig. 5 Old-age dependency ratio 315
Chapter 13
Fig. 1 Population pyramids for US and Canada 328
Chapter 14
Fig. 1 Demography in Germany, Italy and Sweden 1990, 2020
and 2040 355
Chapter 15
Fig. 1 Population pyramids for Hungary, Latvia, Poland
and Romania for 1990, 2020 and 2040 375
Chapter 16
Fig. 1 Population Pyramids of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine
1990–2020–2050 410
Fig. 2 Key Demographic Indicators 411
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1 Relative elderly power across the world in 2015 13
Chapter 3
Table 1 Panel models of revolutionary conflict, 1975–2010 66
Table 2 Panel models of separatist (territorial) conflict, 1975–2010 68
Table 3 Parameter values for revolutionary conflict forecasts
(in Table 4, Fig. 5) 80
Table 4 Five-year expected and observed regional counts of states
in revolutionary conflict 83
Chapter 4
Table 1 India and China, population living in absolute poverty
by religion, 2010 106
Chapter 5
Table 1 Hong Kong: demographic projections 124
Chapter 6
Table 1 Population size and percentage to the world population
in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, 2015–2040 144
xxv
xxvi LIST OF TABLES
Table 2 Median age of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan in 1990,

2015 and 2040 146
Table 3 Share of population in major religious groups in India,
Bangladesh and Pakistan, 2015 149
Chapter 7
Table 1 Demographic data 169
Chapter 8
Table 1 Selected demographic data on Japan and Korea (2019) 196
Chapter 9
Table 1 Key demographic trends in Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda 224
Table 2 International migration patterns in Côte d’Ivoire
and Uganda 225
Chapter 10
Table 1 Demographic shift on different socio-economic indicators 253
Chapter 11
Table 1 ‘What do you think of the number of immigrants accepted
into Australia?’ 2012–2018 292
Chapter 12
Table 1 Main demographic indicators for Argentina and Brazil
in 2015 305
Chapter 13
Table 1 Key demographic statistics, US and Canada, 1990–2040 329
Table 2 US election data by race (select presidential election years) 335
Table 3 US election data by age (select presidential election years) 336
Chapter 14
Table 1 Key population indicators of Sweden, Germany and Italy 353
LIST OF TABLES xxvii
Chapter 15
Table 1 Overview of the demographic situation in selected
countries of East Central Europe in 1990/1995, 2015
and with projections for 2040 377
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Political Demography

as an Analytical Window on Our World
Pieter Vanhuysse and Achim Goerres
1 Why We Need a Political Demography Lens

Much has happened to the world’s populations in the past three decades
since 1990. Migration flows have become large and volatile, making news
headlines and firing up political rhetoric on an almost monthly basis.
Nearly every society in the rich world has been ageing for decades, yet
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter

(https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_1) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
P. Vanhuysse (B)
Department of Political Science, Danish Institute for Advanced Study (DIAS),
and Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics (CPOP-SAMF),
University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
e-mail: vanhuysse@sam.sdu.dk
A. Goerres
Department of Political Science,
University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: Achim.goerres@uni-due.de
© The Author(s) 2021 1

A. Goerres and P. Vanhuysse (eds.), Global Political Demography,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_1
2 P. VANHUYSSE AND A. GOERRES
some of the world’s poorest countries still have a population make-up

revealing massive youth bulges (clearly higher population shares in young
age groups). Urbanization has changed the ways in which individuals live
and interact on many continents and is likely to accelerate even further
in the near future. The majority of the United Nations (UN) member
states have policies in place to attempt some form of population control
or demographic engineering, traditionally mainly in order to manipu-
late fertility rates, now increasingly also migration variables. With many
key variables of population structure in flux wide across the world, there
has rarely been a more urgent time to ask key questions at the inter-
face of demography and political science, population change and politics.
What have been the political and policy consequences of these population
changes in the world’s macro-regions since 1990 until today? And what
can we reasonably expect to happen up to 2040?
Political demography, or the systematic study of population change
and politics, public policies and polities, sees population dynamics (struc-
ture and change) as one of the main drivers of politics at the meso-
and macro-level. As an approach, it can be defined as the study of the
dynamics in the size, composition and distribution of populations and
their effects on political and policy processes.1 As such, rare exceptions
notwithstanding (Goldstone et al., 2012; Teitelbaum, 2015; Vanhuysse
& Goerres, 2012; Weiner & Teitelbaum, 2001), political demography
is still a surprisingly marginal discipline, both within demography and
within political science with no major research networks, loose or institu-
tionalized, or standard works of reference. And yet, ‘the human tide’ of
ever-shifting and changing population trends has been a key shaper of the
political and sociological outlines of the world we inhabit today (Dorling
& Gietel-Basten, 2018; Morland, 2019). Indeed, however widespread
it still may be, the very idea of analysing populations and politics sepa-
rately seems futile. As Robbins and Smith (2017: 212) put it, “[t]here
is a close relationship between observations of births, deaths, and fertility
and normative urges to govern these same things: population research is
political research”.
1 In the words of Myron Weiner, one of its earliest advocates, political demography is
“the study of the size, composition, and distribution of population in relation to both
government and politics. It is concerned with the political consequences of population
change, especially the effects of population change on the demands made upon govern-
ments, on the performance of governments, on the distribution of political power within
states, and on the distribution of national power among states” (cited in Teitelbaum,
2015: S88).
1 INTRODUCTION: POLITICAL DEMOGRAPHY… 3
This book posits that it is both timely and fruitful to adopt a polit-
ical demography lens as an analytical window on our fast-changing world.
We try to do so by bringing together a truly global group of scholars
from area studies, demography, economics, geography, political science
and sociology, to trace and think through political and policy processes
of demographic trends in the macro-region of their expertise, under the
editorial guidance of two died-in-the-wool political scientists. Our aims
are, first and foremost, descriptive: to track, synthesize and summarize the
key demographic developments across these large macro-regions between
1990 and 2040. Then, in a second instance, we aim to theorize, some-
times speculate, about the domestic and intra-regional political and policy
repercussions of these developments.
2 Demographic Megatrends:
Global Political Game Changers
We define population change for our purposes as: (a) the change in
the relative size of the age groups in those societies (mostly due to
changes in fertility, longevity; realized as population ageing or rejuvena-
tion), (b) international migration and (c) changes in the absolute size of
the population. Political consequences refer, here, to political processes
such as voting outcomes, political rhetoric, power balances and various
expressions—peaceful or otherwise—of political conflict, public policies
(e.g. pensions, education, family policy, population control) and political
institutions. We largely leave aside related important questions of mili-
tary strategy and geopolitical balance (e.g. Goldstone, 2002; Haas 2012;
Sciubba, 2012) or of population ethics (e.g. Coole, 2018; Dasgupta,
2019; van Parijs, 1998). In terms of geographic scope, we aim for a
truly all-encompassing global scope. We present comparative analyses,
written by area experts, of major countries in the following macro-
regions: North Africa (Tunisia and Morocco) and sub-Saharan Africa
(Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda); Southern America (Argentina and Brazil)
and Northern America (Canada and the US), South Asia (India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh; Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philip-
pines); East Asia (South Korea and Japan; China, Macao, Hong Kong
and Taiwan); Australia and Oceania (New Zealand); and Europe (Russia,
Ukraine and Belarus); Continental Western Europe; and East Central
Europe. Figure 1 shows a map highlighting which countries are covered
in which chapter.
Fig. 1 Overview of countries covered in the book and their chapter (Source
Own computation)
In addition, to better frame these macro-regional analyses, we also

present overarching synthetic overviews of three hugely salient issues
of global political demography today: migration flows (Skeldon, this
volume), poverty and religious affiliation (Skirbekk & Navarro, this
volume) and youth bulges (Cincotta & Weber, this volume). Extending
our analytical time horizon up to 2040, a frequent practice in demog-
raphy, may rightly be a cause of scepticism to many political scientists
or sociologists. After all, predicting the future is a notoriously perilous
activity, the graveyard of many an expert’s reputation (Tetlock, 2006;
Tetlock & Gardner, 2015). Human societies are complex systems in
which agentic actors must navigate uncertain landscapes, and which have
emergent properties (Jervis, 1997; Room, 2016). As Karl Popper (1957)
noted long ago, an important set of major social trends are by nature
unexpected and essentially hard to predict and plan for. These include
‘black swan’ shocks such as financial, environmental and economic crises
that are extremely hard to predict, yet, when they occur, radically perturb
the game plans of policymakers and social actors (Taleb, 2001, 2013).
However, population developments are at least partially an exception to
the inherent unpredictability of social and political life. True enough, as
Europe has observed since 2015, massive migration streams can arise
in the scope of days and weeks, significantly shaping political actions,
discourses and policies. Rare, devastating pandemics such as COVID-19

since late 2019 can have even swifter, and strongly age-asymmetric, effects
on population mortality rates. But in other respects, populations better
resemble massive, slow-moving elephants. Once a cohort has been born,
we know with relative statistical certainty key elements of its future life
course, such as its infant mortality, gender balance, expected life span
and remaining life span at ages 40, 60 and 80 (but, crucially, not its
net migration rate). It is this mixture of certainty and unpredictability of
population change and its interdependence with politics that fascinated us
throughout this book.
So we do know a few things with some confidence, extrapolating into
the near future from currently ongoing global population trends. And
what we know points to both major turbulences and disparities ahead.
Already today, half the world’s population is younger than 30, but half
the rich world’s voting population is over 55. In other words, within
global trends there is substantial variation in population changes and
political reactions. As Kaufmann and Toft (2012: 5) note, the demo-
graphic trends of the twenty-first century will lead, almost inevitably, to
“aging great powers with shrinking labour forces alongside youthful and
rapidly growing developing nations home to terrorism and turbulence”.
For instance, youth bulges are near-certain to arise or even grow in
places like Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh. And when they do, they are likely, though not
predestined, to be accompanied by a higher incidence of crime, violence
and unemployment (Cincotta & Weber, this volume; Cincotta & Doces,
2012; Urdal, 2012). By contrast, the labour force is near-certain to shrink
significantly as silver populations will continue to grow in super-sized
economies such as Japan, Brazil, China and every single one of Europe’s
key economic powerhouses (Bloom et al., 2015; Vanhuysse & Goerres,
2012). Unlike Coleman and Basten (2015), Goldstone (2012: 25–27)
posits that globally, the next few decades will see the relative decline of
Europe and the Americas compared to Asia and Africa, “a fun house
mirror of aging” of older rich countries and very young poor countries,
and “migration, migration everywhere”.
But—what is ageing? It is certainly true that Europe, like East Asia and
South America, are becoming demographically older continents when the
aggregate age is measured by standard (chronological) old-age depen-
dency ratios (henceforth OADRs, the number of 65plussers per 100
people aged 18–64). But of course, especially in the richer regions of
these same continents and among the richer classes within them, chrono-
logically elderly citizens are also likely to grow both cognitively fitter and
prospectively younger, with longer remaining life expectancy at later ages
(Kristensen et al., 2009; Sanderson & Scherbov, 2010, 2019; Skirbekk,
2012). As Vanhuysse and Perek-Bialas (this volume) put it, with few
notable exceptions, many of the world’s rich societies today are simul-
taneously ageing (chronologically) and not ageing or even rejuvenating
(prospectively).
However, these observable trends—themselves a result of better
lifestyles, health policies, health treatments and technologies, and early-
life conditions—are unlikely to translate proportionately into outcomes of
political economy importance, whether in terms of increased productivity,
economic growth, faster technology adoption or higher levels of labour
market participation on the part of older workers through later retirement
or even unretirement (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2017; Gordon, 2016).
Neither are they likely to be compensated by massive (and politically
unpalatable) immigration boosts. Despite improvements in prospective
old-age dependency ratios, the continued increase of chronological old-
age dependency ratios therefore implies that there will be fewer young
and prime working-age people burdened with providing fiscal founda-
tions for ageing welfare states (Sanderson & Scherbov, 2019; Vanhuysse,
2015a). For instance, the UN Population Division estimated that already
by 2030 the number of 60plussers will be two-thirds larger than that of
children below 15 in France and more than twice as large in Germany.
As Goldstone (2012: 26) notes, these are “astonishing numbers, never
before seen in human history”.
3 Grey Power and Voting: Pro-Elderly

Policy Bias and the Rise of Gerontocracy?
In political science and political economy, the near-universal acceleration
of population ageing since the 1990s in the advanced democracies has
led to renewed debates about elderly power. This literature puts forward
three main propositions: (1) currently, older persons receive more overall
public transfers than in past decades (Kotlikoff & Burns, 2012); (2) older
persons receive more than children (Vanhuysse, 2013) when looked at
cross-sectionally; and (3) the elderly/children public transfer ratio has
been increasing. The tendency is alternatively referred to as ‘grey power’,
‘gerontocracy’ (Sinn & Uebelmesser, 2002), or ‘pro-elderly bias’ (Tepe

& Vanhuysse, 2010a). More alarmist accounts even speak of generational
‘storms’ or ‘clashes’ (Kotlikoff & Burns, 2012). Here, too, non-linear
and non-functionalist thinking would be welcome. Direct evidence of
resource grabs by elderly voters is mixed at best thus far.2 True enough,
advanced welfare states do indeed appear to be distinctly, if variably,
elderly oriented in their public transfer patterns (Tepe & Vanhuysse,
2010a; Vanhuysse, 2013, 2014). But once we shine a wider light on what
resources generations give each other and also look at private transfer
patterns (cash and time), the ensuing picture is not just more complete
but also radically different. These same welfare states, it turns out, are
actually embedded within societies composed of strongly child-oriented
families (really, parents) (Gal et al., 2018; Vanhuysse & Gal, 2021). Also,
the social status of older people is lower in some contemporary societies,
even though their relative numerical share is higher (Foner, 1984). In
other words, it may be that grey power is talked about most in contexts
in which the social status of older people (especially, older men) has never
been lower. That said, changes in the distribution of political power and
other key resources are highly likely to follow from the uneven demo-
graphic growth rates of key ethnic, religious and age groups within
the population (Goldstone, 2012; Teitelbaum, 2015). Uneven growth is
crucial for politics—these relative power changes in turn are likely to lead
to distinct political developments and conflicts at the meso-, macro- and
inter-state level.3
Our overarching question in this book is how the ever-evolving polit-
ical economy and political sociology traits of some population groups
relative to others—notably in terms of numerical size, economic clout
and political capacity—can be expected to affect public policies, political
actions and political order, via the intermediary of political and institu-
tional processes, and how this may then produce various feedback effects.
What does the demographic profile in terms of statics and dynamics tell us
2 See, for instance, Vanhuysse (2001), Goerres (2007a, 2009), Tepe and Vanhuysse
(2009, 2010b, 2012) and Goerres and Vanhuysse (2012).
3 To quote Kaufmann and Toft (2012: 5): “Unbalanced age (and sex) ratios tend to
alter rates of economic growth, unemployment, instability, and violence. Urbanization
creates dislocations that have traditionally been associated with religious, ethnic, class, or
nationalist movements. And differential ethno-religious population growth may set the
stage for ethnic, religious, and nationalist violence, value conflict, or challenges to the
unity of what are often fragile states”.
about the political problems that a country or a macro-region was facing

in 1990, is facing today, and will be facing by 2040? This demographic
structure in turn reflects stages of socio-economic modernization. Cohort
sizes influence citizens’ demand on the state in certain policy areas, as
mediated by institutions, notably constellations of trade unions and age-
relevant interest groups, electoral, legal and constitutional rules, policy
and governance cultures, and welfare state regimes. The degree to which
these factors affect a cohort’s relative political power will then affect its
command of policy resources and the cornerstones of political order. To
analyse these many variables empirically and coherently, we have built the
Global Political Demography Database (Goerres et al., 2020) as an empir-
ical companion to this book, which covers many more countries than we
can analyse in depth here.
4 Putting the Global Political

Demography Database to Work
4.1 The Age Composition of Societies
It is worth pointing out from the outset that the observation that a larger
number of people can expect to live longer lives (of quality) is, perhaps
first and foremost, a yardstick of social progress (Vanhuysse, 2015b).
Moderately low levels of fertility may actually imply improvements in
living standards (Lee, 2014). In fact, they may even be desirable as long as
human capital levels increase and environmental costs decrease (Dasgupta,
2019; Striessnig & Lutz, 2013). Population ageing is therefore not a
moral problem as such. Nor is it necessarily a political problem every-
where, as many of the chapters in this volume demonstrate. Globally, the
median age rose from 23.4 in 1990 to 29.3 in 2015. It is projected to
rise even further to 35.6 in 2040. Let us turn towards the share of older
people as more directly relevant indicator from an ageing perspective.
Globally, the proportion of people aged 65+ had a mean of 6.0% in 1990,
8.4% in 2015 and is estimated to rise to 14.5% in 2040. This implies an
increase by a factor of 2.4 in 50 years. Moreover, the heterogeneity of
the share of older people is also increasing strongly, from a standard devi-
ation of 3.9% in 1990 to 8.9% in 2040. In other words, the population
make-up with regard to older people will be getting more heterogeneous
as we progress into the future. The per-country change in the proportion
of older people relative to the population across the period 1990–2040
varies dramatically, too. Seven countries, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Chad,

Sao Tome and Principe, Central African Republic, Lesotho, Burkina Faso
are projected to experience a small decline in the proportion of older
people between 1990 and 2040, with the 1.2 percentage point decline in
Equatorial Guinea being the largest. Among all other 193 countries and
regions in the sample, the projection points towards an increase in the
proportion of the older people between 1990 and 2040. South Korea
is the world leader in population ageing with an estimated increase of
+25.9 percentage points from 5.2 to 31.1% (also Klein & Mosler, this
volume). This almost universal picture of population ageing does not go
hand in hand with a universal awareness of population ageing as a polit-
ical issue. In fact, surprisingly, even some countries with rapid ageing,
such as India, show no indication yet of that being problematized (James
& Balachandran, this volume).
Other demographic indicators mirror a similar pattern. To touch briefly
on the young end of the distribution, globally the relative proportion of
young people (aged 0–17) had a mean of 41.2% in 1990 and is projected
to decline to only 26.8% in 2040. But even in 2040, there will still be a lot
of cross-country-heterogeneity as to the variation of the share of young
people between the minimum of 13.8% in Portugal and the maximum
of 53.2% in Congo. In 2040, the proportion of young people will be
roughly four times as high in Congo as in Portugal with a large potential
for conflict in the former compared to the latter (Urdal, 2012; Cincotta
& Weber, this volume).
Another key demographic indicator is the OADR. This measure is
politically very relevant since many age-redistributive systems are built
around the notion of taking from the working-age population (with a
censoring of working age at 15 and around the mid-60s) and giving it to
people aged older than mid-60s, and typically retired around that age (Gal
et al., 2018; Vanhuysse & Gal, 2021). Even though the age demarcation
lines are likely to change, this idea of cross-age group public redistribu-
tion is likely to remain valid into the future of welfare politics. In 1990,
across the globe there were on average 9.8 65plussers per 100 people
aged 15–64. This number rose to 12.9 in 2015 and is projected to rise to
23.6 in 2040. This means that on average the OADR is estimated to rise
by the factor 2.4 in 50 years. In 2040, the minimum (4.8) will be slightly
above that in 1990 (1.7), but the maximum will rise from 27.7 in 1990
(Sweden) to 69.3 in 2040 (Martinique). Some countries will see such an
OADR increase of 54.7 (Martinique). Other countries that started from
a low OADR level in 1990 will see an unprecedented relative rise by a

factor of more than 8, such as the United Arab Emirates (from 1.7 to
16.3). In other words, any system based on cross-age redistribution in
the United Arab Emirates is undergoing a drastic change in the relative
group sizes that are part of that redistribution. Such drastic changes mini-
mally need political mediation and can maximally lead to political conflict
about how to manage such changes politically.
4.2 International Migration

In the five-year period 1985 to 1990, most countries experienced rela-
tively little net migration in percent of their 1990 population size (the
number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants divided by 1990
population size). The mean was −0.7%, meaning that on average coun-
tries experiences a slight emigration averaged across the previous 5 years,
worth about 0.7% of their 1990 populace. Indeed, the bulk of coun-
tries in the middle 50% of the distribution, within the interquartile range,
reached values between −1.7 and +0.6%. There were some stark outliers
in that period, too. Ten countries had a negative net migration worth
more than 10% of its 1990 population size with Liberia at the minimum
of −19.0% due to its civil war at that time. Four countries had more
than 10% positive net migration with Djibouti at the maximum of 15.3%.
The overall picture remained pretty similar in 2015, with a mean of 0.1%,
an interquartile range between −1.2 and +0.7%, a minimum of −22.5%
(Syria due to its civil war) and a maximum of +26.9% (Qatar, due to
massive domestic investment attracting migrant labourers). These few
descriptive statistics suffice to show how single country episodes can dras-
tically change the net migration experience of a country (also Skeldon,
this volume). This, we speculate, is the reason that the projections for
net migration in the period 2035–2040 (medium UN projection) are
much more homogeneous, compared to the historical numbers because
single episodes cannot be predicted well. The 200 countries are projected
to have much less extreme values as to their net migration. When we
compare net migration relative to population size in 2010–2015 with net
migration in 1985–1990, we see again the importance of single episodes
shifting the migration profile of some countries dramatically, sometimes
even from a strong emigration profile to a strong immigration profile.
Lebanon, for instance, changed from relative net migration of −8.4% in
1990 to +21.3% in 2015 due to the combination of its own past civil war
and the civil war in adjacent Syria. This foreshadows some of the patterns
that the contributors in this book observe (for instance, Skeldon, this
volume).
4.3 Patterns of Covariation Between Population and Political

Indicators
Let us look at three political indicators and see how they co-vary with
central indicators of demography: age group composition, net migration
and fertility. For our Global Political Demography Database (Goerres
et al., 2020), we compiled, more extensively than ever before to our
knowledge, age group specific estimates of electoral turnout (see online
Appendix A.1 for a detailed table).
Figure 2 reveals an almost universal political demography observa-
tion: older people are more likely to go to the polls compared to young
people in the same country. Only few countries are on or to the right
Fig. 2 Estimated turnout rates in the last national election in or just before
2015 for young people (aged 18–29) and older people (60+) (Source Own
computations from Global Political Demography Database [Goerres et al.,
2020])
of the 45-degree line (which captures countries where the turnout rates
are the same), possibly due to a rather universal process of habituation
and growing norm-abidance associated with individual ageing (Goerres,
2007b). If we combine these two pieces of information into one data
point by producing a ratio (estimated turnout of older people divided
by estimated turnout among young people), we get a variable of the
turnout of older people (those aged above 60) relative to that of younger
people (those aged 18–29). This relative turnout ratio varies between
0.89 (Pakistan) to 4.4 (Lebanon), with a mean of 1.5. This means that
on average turnout among older people is 1.5 times as high as that of
younger people. Can we predict this relative turnout by demographic
indicators, with simple controls for electoral system, average turnout and
GDP? When we run a multivariate regression, we find that higher net
migration relative to the 2015 population positively predicts the ratio.
Countries with more immigration also tend to have an electoral turnout
ratio skewed more in favour of older people. For every percentage point
more of net migration, the turnout ratio is estimated to increase by 0.04
(90% c.i. [0.013; 0.07.3]). Recall that the turnout ratio ranges from 0.9
to 4.4. There is thus a correlational pattern between the ratio of turnout
rates and migration even after we have included simple control variables.
Let us now go one step further and add the relative population size of
each age group to the relative turnout measure. We multiply the rela-
tive turnout ratio by the age group size ratio (those aged above 60
divided by those aged 18–29). This new variable, relative elderly power,
proxies the electoral-numerical strength of older relative to younger age
groups. It can take high values when the relative share of older people
gets bigger and when the turnout of older people gets bigger relative
to that of younger people (Table 1). Japan comes out top because it
has both a high share of older people relative to that of younger people
and a relatively high electoral turnout among older people (also Klein &
Mosler, this volume). All five other countries in the top six of the ‘relative
elderly power’ ratio globally are European. Three of these are demo-
graphically still somewhat younger countries from East Central Europe,
a macro-region where many countries have developed strong tendencies
towards premature gerontocracy and pro-elderly bias (Vanhuysse, 2006;
Vanhuysse & Perek-Bialas, this volume). These East Central European
countries have remarkably low turnout rates among young people relative
to older people, placing these countries high on that measure.
Table 1 Relative
Top 6 5.9 Japan
elderly power across the
5.0 France
world in 2015 4.1 Latvia
3.8 UK
3.4 Croatia
3.3 Slovenia
Mean 1.3
Bottom 5 0.25 Sao Tome and Principe
0.27 Sierra Leone
0.29 Burundi, Uganda, Liberia
Source Own computations from Global Political Demography

Database (Goerres et al., 2020)
At the bottom of Table 1, we find a number of demographically very

young societies in Africa where young people are relatively active in terms
of turnout. We take the natural logarithm of this variable in order to
stretch out the range between 0 and 1 and to make the ranges below and
above 1 more comparable unitwise. We plot this variable against GDP per
capita in 2015 (Fig. 3) and find a relatively clear relationship. Richer coun-
tries tend to have higher values on the ln (relative elderly power) variable.
The increases are particularly large among the poorer countries and less
so at higher levels of GDP/per capita. This relationship holds in a regres-
sion set-up when we control for net migration and voting turnout. That
is, richer countries tend to have an old-age power measure more tilted in
favour of older people, and this relationship is much steeper among the
bottom half poorest countries than in the top half.
In 2015, the 183 countries for which our Global Political Demog-
raphy Database has information showed government revenue of between
7.6 and 160% of GDP, with a mean of 29.6%. Stronger states can collect
more revenue relative to the size of their economies. Such stronger state
capacity is clearly related to population structure: government revenue is
predicted to be higher in countries with a higher share of older people,
but it is not significantly associated with net migration. The significant
estimate from the share of older people takes the predictive power away
from GDP per capita, which otherwise positively predicted revenue. In
other words, government revenue is higher in richer countries, but this
effect is ultimately mediated by the share of older people: population
structure beats economic prosperity in terms of explanatory power.
Fig. 3 The curvilinear relationship between relative elderly power (logged) and
GDP per capita (around 2015) (Source Own computations from Global Political
Demography Database [Goerres et al., 2020])
This short exploratory analysis has revealed a number of striking

patterns. First, population ageing is a near universal experience across
much but not all of the world. Second, population ageing shows
increasing heterogeneity across societies. The world is becoming more
different in terms of its population ageing experience with sometimes
stark differences between 1990 and 2040 as to measures of ageing. Third
and in contrast, international migration does not change much if we
compare the aggregate snapshot pictures of 1990 and 2015. However,
there are strong differences in the experience of migration change across
countries. Fourth, we have explored electoral turnout of older people
relative to younger people, relative elderly power and government revenue
as key variables of political demography. For all three variables, we detect
patterns of association with various demographic measures that introduce
a number of patterns worth exploring.
5 Globally Crosscutting Themes of Political

Demography: Migration, Religion and Age Profiles
After three overarching globally comparing chapters, this book analyses
selected countries in all the world’s major geographic macro-regions. We
are reminded of the central place of migration in the political founding
myths of states and nations in history by Ronald Skeldon (this volume).
The social construction of migration has always been a powerful narrative
to explain political change. Moreover, Skeldon points towards a global
shift in the politics of migration. Seen from the countries with low and
further declining fertility, there is a growing need for immigrants from
other countries that also tend to have higher fertility. At the same time,
there is an increasing fear of ‘the others’ who are migrating, with extreme
right-wing and/or nationalist-populist parties and other political actors
capitalizing on that fear. How democratic polities with low fertility navi-
gate the political consequences of their need for immigration may be one
of the most important open questions for political demography. Finally,
Skeldon analyses the importance of diaspora politics, both for the coun-
tries of residence and for the sending countries (also Collier, 2014).
Members of the diaspora may be transnational drivers of political change.
In their countries of residence, they might influence the foreign policy
towards the countries they or their ancestors originally came from. Finan-
cial remittances and the diffusion of, for instance, democratic norms may
fundamentally change elements of political life in these sending countries.
Vegard Skirbekk and José Navarro (this volume) provide a novel
description of the religious composition of the poorest one-fifth of people
worldwide, around a billion individuals. They argue that religions tradi-
tionally offer ways of coping with poverty, including meaning and hope,
and could also steer flows of financial wealth. The religious composition
of a country or a region may also affect the level of social support and
level of financial transfers, as welfare and social welfare systems can be
organized through religious groups and indirectly affected by the degree
of social welfare. Some religious groups have relatively large shares living
in poverty, such as the Hindu community. These religions may motivate
different political behaviour if a large share of their compatriots is poor.
For instance, this could motivate a stronger preference for transfers within
the particular religions—but may also lower the ability to implement an
effective, universal and sufficiently generous social security scheme as the
economic burden would be too high on the rest of the community whose
members might be unwilling to shoulder it.
Richard Cincotta and Hannes Weber (this volume) analyse the rela-
tionship between age transition of countries (the shift in the mean age)
and intra-state conflicts across the globe. They demonstrate that soci-
eties at an early stage of the age transition, as characterized by a ‘youth
bulge’ on the age pyramids, have a higher likelihood of experiencing
revolutionary conflicts. This pattern is also visible for separatist conflicts,
but not as clearly. The authors thus add to the theoretical notion that
higher numbers of younger people with low risk aversion and not enough
social and economic mobility create political conflict (also Goldstone,
2002; Urdal, 2012). Interestingly, Cincotta and Weber’s findings can
be juxtaposed with the literature about gerontocracy in advanced indus-
trial democracies (Tepe & Vanhuysse, 2009, 2010a). Cincotta and Weber
demonstrate that young societies have a particularly high likelihood to
experience intra-state conflict, but this likelihood decreases as societies
age. In mature welfare states, in contrast, older societies with a higher
share of older people are feared because they mean a higher number of
beneficiaries that need to be financed.
6 The ‘Old’ Continent: Is the European

Phoenix Going Back to Ashes?
The countries in Western Europe, broadly defined, are prime exam-
ples of the political consequences of population ageing. Increasing life
expectancy and low fertility have for decades led to older and contin-
uously ageing societies. Elias Naumann and Moritz Hess (this volume)
show that Germany, Italy and Sweden, despite having very different
welfare state regimes, have dealt with the political challenges of ageing
very similarly. They have introduced various measures to reconcile paid
work and unpaid parental care and integrate more women and older
people into the paid workforce. Immigration has not met the demands
for more workforce thus far. Although there is little evidence that mass
immigration has de-legitimized the welfare state, it has contributed to
the rise of right-populist parties wide across Western Europe. It remains
to be seen whether these countries will remain able to maintain their
extensive welfare states despite continuously ageing populations merely
by gradual and marginal adjustment of their welfare state structures (Tepe
& Vanhuysse, 2009, 2010b, 2012).
In East Central Europe, a quarter-century-long demographic window

after 1990 offered extensive opportunity to prepare for fast popula-
tion ageing ahead. But this opportunity has largely been spurned, and
the window is now shut. As Pieter Vanhuysse and Jolanta Perek-Bialas
(this volume) note, the new East Central European democracies, despite
having started the post-communist era with comparatively young popu-
lations, subsequently adapted their policy models insufficiently for the
predicted accelerated greying of their populations. Especially in Romania,
Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and the Czech and Slovak republics, this
failure is reflected in comparatively low ranks in active ageing and
child well-being indexes, small social investment in early human capital,
weak improvements in prospective old-age dependency ratios, and often
dramatic levels of outmigration of young people. The latter four coun-
tries and Slovenia, but not the Baltics, also developed into “pensioners’
welfare states” with prematurely high levels of pro-elderly policy bias.
In some cases, massive politically induced early labour market exit wors-
ened pension system unsustainability while boosting pensioners’ electoral
power (Vanhuysse, 2004, 2009). However, around the time when the
demographic window started closing (2010–2015), the political salience
of family policies, work-family reconciliation policies and active ageing
policy increased, often spurred by the same Christian-conservative and/or
nationalist-populist parties that also drove a larger trend of weakening
governance and significant democratic backsliding alongside. But as
Vanhuysse and Perek-Bialas note, by that time the relative political power
of elderly voters during elections in East Central Europe was among the
highest in the world (see our comparative data above). This macro-region
will catch up fast with Western European population structures in the
two decades ahead, while facing the added challenge of the consequences
of large-scale (young) brain drain to Northern and Western Europe,
especially from Romania and the Baltics.
Going geographically further to the east, Rza Kazimov and Sergei
Zakharov (this volume) systematically compare the politics of population
change in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. They shed light on the poli-
tics of three main developments that set these societies apart from both
Eastern and Western European countries: fertility rates vary massively
across regions and ethnic groups (with minorities often showing higher
fertility rates in the geographical and political periphery), there are large
gender gaps in mortality (with men having much shorter life spans)
and there is sizable emigration driven by violent conflict and economic
recession. These three countries differ from the other European coun-
tries (apart from Hungary) analysed in this book in that they are not
full liberal democracies. According to the 2020 Freedom House Status
(2020), Belarus and Russia qualified as not free and Ukraine just as
partly free. The authoritarian governments of these three countries recog-
nize the problems by incentivizing higher fertility by more cash transfers.
However, Kazimov and Zakharov see these policies as insufficient and
point to the risk of political destabilization in these three countries.
7 The Politics of Routine Mass

Immigration: Australia and New Zealand
Australia and New Zealand are intriguing country experiences. Both
countries belong to the OECD world and share many institutional
features with other liberal democracies, such as established welfare states.
However, as Peter McDonald and Andrew Markus (this volume) demon-
strate (with a particular emphasis on Australia), the political experience
of population change here differs in significant ways from the rest of
the OECD world. Mass immigration has been more typical of these two
countries since they opened the way to a more diverse group of immi-
grants in the 1970s. The increase, especially of citizens of Asian descent,
has not led to a politicization of race and has not significantly altered
election results despite some recent episodes of anti-immigrant public
sentiment. Multicultural values find widespread support in the populace.
The main political challenge of population change is the concentration of
more and more citizens in the large metropolitan areas with ensuing pres-
sures on housing prices; population ageing is relatively mildly politicized
and race/ethnicity is remarkably silent as a political issue.
8 The Ever-Diverging American Continent

For the Americas, this volume contains comparative analyses of Argentina
and Brazil by Diego Wachs, Vitor Calvalcanti and Clara Galeazzi and
of the United States and Canada by Jennifer Sciubba. While these four
countries are on the same continent, their political-demographic expe-
riences differ and further diverge widely. In South American Brazil and
Argentina, immigration has decreased significantly in the last decades, so
that the populations stabilized. Increases in life expectancy and decreases
in fertility further increasing population ageing that cannot be compen-

sated by immigration. At the same time, both countries are characterized
by high levels of social inequality. Social policy was primarily used to alle-
viate poverty. Given the change in population with much less immigration
and population ageing, social policies have come under pressure to adapt
because the numerical balance between contributors to and beneficia-
ries from redistribution measures is becoming increasingly unsustainable.
In that dynamic, the two South American countries show similarities to
Western Europe even though the levels of social spending are different.
Southern American countries face the political challenges of providing
sensible social policies in the face of population ageing, and high levels of
social inequality. Some social groups, such as the older poor, will signif-
icantly increase in size, creating a double driver of increased demand for
redistributive policies.
In North America, Canada and the United States experienced two
similar demographic developments: population ageing and an increasing
diversity of the workforces as to race and immigrant background. The
former experience makes it necessary for both countries to adapt their
redistribution systems to maintain financial sustainability. Currently, the
United States may face a bigger problem in the long run with financing
Social Security than Canada with its public pension system. The later
experience leads to two different ways of dealing with the increasing
cultural diversity. Canada shows an elite and media system that is largely
united behind the ideal of a multicultural society. In contrast, the United
States shows a starkly divided public sphere with strong media outlets
that incite part of the populace against the increasing shares of non-
Whites. Sciubba (this volume) goes further by pointing out that the
electoral registration system in the United States has prevented a sizeable
proportion of (new) non-White voters into the electorate whereas Canada
is relatively successful at integration visible minorities into the electoral
process. On balance, Canada thus seems better equipped to deal with the
consequences of population ageing and increasing ethnic diversity.
9 The African Continent: Frustrated Youth

as a Simmering Threat to Political Order
Christof Hartmann and Catherine Promise Biira (this volume) discuss
political demography in Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire. In line with most
other sub-Saharan African states, the population of both countries is still
growing steadily and becoming more youthful. At the same time, both
Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda are net importers of immigrants, albeit for
different reasons (economic or conflict-induced). The growing number
of young people without economic opportunities and the consequent
precarious prospects of leading decent lives and starting families have, on
the whole, not led to massive eruptions of political violence, nor to the
questioning of the legitimacy of the existing political order. Incidents of
youth becoming violent in Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire seem to occur in a
context of elite-instigated and -controlled mobilization. Economic exclu-
sion makes it easier for politicians to manipulate youth into attending
election rallies or intimidating political opponents. In both Côte d’Ivoire
and Uganda, the dominant, and thus far successful, strategy of state elites
has been to manage access to jobs in the official police and military
apparatus and to other private benefits for youth leaders.
The political demography picture looks much different in the northern
countries of the African continent, where the Arab Spring occurred a
decade ago. As Alessandra Bonci and Francesco Cavatorta point out (this
volume), long-standing structural problems (political and economic) are
key to understanding the uprisings and demands for radical change in
Tunisia and Morocco. Bonci and Cavatorta note that, while youth unem-
ployment is a considerable problem in this part of Africa too, it would be
erroneous to focus exclusively on the youth bulge as the ‘bulge’ is more a
myth than a demographic reality when one looks to the medium and long
term. The authors emphasize the way in which the political and economic
systems in place benefit only a small elite and lead to long-simmering frus-
trations, rather than offering aspirations and hope, to the sizable young
populations in permanent ‘waithood’.
10 The Asian Continent:

Population Giants on the Move
Nele Noesselt (this volume) compares the People’s Republic of China and
Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. She paints the picture of a constellation
of countries very unequal in size, with the People’s Republic heavily influ-
encing the other three entities with its policy decisions about how to deal
with heavy population ageing. This is a region where population aged
heavily due to the One-Child-Policy in place between 1979 and 2015.
Different than in other countries, this process of population ageing thus
began forcefully before later stages of the socio-economic modernization
process could be reached. Most importantly, labour shortage is at the

centre of policy change and the decision taken in the People’s Republic
as to dealing with shortages affect the labour markets of the other three,
too. Next to the theme of ageing before modernization, we also witness
an overall successful adaptation of dealing with population change in this
region that did not de-stabilize the system.
Axel Klein and Hannes Mosler (this volume) discuss Japan (the world’s
frontrunner in population ageing) and South Korea (which in many
demographic ways seems to follow Japan closely). Both societies aged
a lot (Japan being further ahead) in the last decades and face popula-
tion shrinkage. Both countries experience the political problems of labour
shortage, which is only partially met by foreign labour, by the activation
of women into the paid labour market and by keeping senior citizens in
the workforce. Furthermore, there is, especially in Japan, the strategy to
develop further various technologies in order to deal with the insufficient
supply of labourers (see also Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2017). In politics,
especially on the right side of the spectrum, the perception of what is
going on in other countries with similar demographic profiles creates the
impression that a further influx of immigrants could create problems that
should be circumvented.
KS James and Arun Balachandran (this volume) discuss the three South
Asian super-size countries India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, with a special
focus on India as the world’s largest democracy. They show that while
India and Bangladesh have similar patterns of changes in age-structure
and fertility transition, Pakistan is at an earlier stage of such demo-
graphic transitions. Consequently, in the coming three decades, India and
Bangladesh will show signs of ageing society, whereas Pakistan will still
remain a young country. James and Balachandran discuss striking differ-
entials in regional and religious patterns of demographic heterogeneity
within both India and Pakistan and illustrate at length the enormous
importance of demographic patterns on the political order among these
South Asian giants.
The Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philip-
pines, as Patrick Ziegenhain shows (this volume), have all witnessed an
enormous demographic transition within a very short period. One major
future problem for especially Indonesia and the Philippines could be
that economic growth stalls before these societies transition into high-
income status. Getting old before getting rich is therefore one of the
biggest medium-term structural challenge. Ziegenhain also analyses the
challenges that occurred in relation to the pension system, the labour

market, the migration movements, the urbanization as well as the conse-
quences of demographic change in different regions and among different
ethnic/religious groups in the respective countries.
11 Political Demography
as a Perspective on Global Challenges
At the end of this volume, Stuart A. Gietel-Basten steps back from the
detailed, geographically focused analyses of the macro-regional chapters
to again look at the big picture. He observes that there always seems to
be a political need for managing population change: too many people
here; too few there. Fertility rates are too low in some places; too high
in others. Population ageing brings unprecedented challenges to social
welfare systems and economic growth, while ‘youth bulges’ are associ-
ated with security threats. Migration, a partial answer to some of these
issues, is frequently seen as politically toxic. Gietel-Basten argues that
these apparent demographic travails are, perhaps, downstream conse-
quences of broader institutional malfunctions: symptoms, rather than
causes, of ongoing challenges in our societies. As such, any effort to
tackle these ‘demographic problems’ with solely demographic solutions
may be destined to fail. Only by understanding how these demographic
issues have come about can we have any hope of shaping holistic policy
solutions to ensure sustainable population development.
The contributions in this book reveal a few major takeaway messages:
The political consequences and the political embeddedness of population
change lie at the heart of the social sciences at large. The chapters demon-
strate that population change tends to generate major opportunities and
challenges in any society or political system. It is difficult to think of any
minor issue of population change that does not need societal and political
reaction. Therefore, political demography as a sub-discipline deals with
core questions of the social sciences at large. Paradoxically, this is a study
area that is underdeveloped even though its main themes lie at the core
of what constitutes societies and political systems.
Population change creates short-term and long-term challenges, both of
which require political solutions. Among the two major themes of popula-
tion change in this book, population ageing and migration, there seems
to be a clear difference on the time dimension. International migration is
much more event-driven and therefore subject to short-term fluctuation
than population ageing, which is due to structural, more slow-moving

changes. From a citizen perspective, short-term changes create stronger
reactions, as people tend to compare against their recent own status quo
ante. International migration is therefore not just more volatile but also
more politically unpredictable than population ageing.
Political reactions to population changes follow very context-specific paths
because their level of ‘problematicness’ is socially and politically constructed.
The contributions in this volume demonstrate the richness and hetero-
geneity in political reactions to and for population change. Some themes
re-emerge again and again: a fixation on a certain level of fertility rate,
a management of the question who is “the other” and a predominant
view of population ageing as something bad. However, how policymakers
and the public deal with questions of population change is strongly
context-dependent. This seems to be a function of the complexity of the
manifestations of population change. What constitutes a problem (and
if so, which kind of problem), what constitutes an opportunity (and if
so which opportunity) is the outcome of complex political processes in
which the histories, institutions and co-occurring discussions matter. This
also implies that population change is not political destiny. It requires the
active social construction of problems by actors, which can then lead to
political reactions.
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CHAPTER 2
Migration in Political Demography: A Review

of Evidence
Ronald Skeldon
1 Introduction: The Problem Stated

While political demography may be “under-represented in political
science” (Weiner & Teitelbaum in Kaufmann & Toft, 2012: 3), popu-
lation has been a highly politicized topic for over two hundred years,
certainly since the times of Robert Malthus. Whether there are too many
people in the world, and what should be done about it, has exercised
minds of various political persuasions for many decades and particularly
since the Second World War. This was a time in which two issues relevant
to the theme emerged: first, the very real rapid population growth in what
was termed the ‘developing world’, today the ‘global south’, and second,
the emergence of a number of international organizations that could
address the issue in the context of ‘development’. Today, however, it is
population decrease in certain parts of the world and its consequences for,
among other things, increased migration that is exerting politicians and
R. Skeldon (B)
Emeritus Professor, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
e-mail: r.skeldon@sussex.ac.uk
Honorary Professor, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_2
30 R. SKELDON
public alike. That is, fertility decline, which has led to decreasing growth
in labour force and, ultimately, towards population decline in many parts
of the developed world, has increased pressure to import labour. Hence,
politics has reacted both to the fear of growing numbers of “the other”
and to the need for “the other”. The policy challenges of stagnating and
declining populations will be as great in the future as those of expanding
populations in a previous age.
In contrast to these lofty ideas, political demography has a much more
focused remit, which is to study “the size, composition, and distribution
of population in relation to both government and politics” (Kaufmann &
Duffy Toft, 2012: 3). The same writers go on to view migration studies
as occupying “an academic archipelago isolated from associated questions
on the political impact of migration on sending and receiving societies”
(Kaufmann & Toft, 2012: 4). One need not necessarily agree with this
statement to accept that some disconnect exists between migration studies
and other major branches of the social sciences. However, one might add
that a disconnect also exists within political demography itself, between
its primary focus on the impact of age structures on the one hand and an
adequate consideration of migration issues on the other. To these discon-
nects must be added one of the two major schisms in migration studies:
that between refugees against all other forms of migration.1 This divi-
sion is so marked that, for many, refugees are not migrants and cannot be
considered within the same category (e.g. UNHCR, 2016). Yet, refugees
do add to or subtract from, populations of destination and origin, respec-
tively. As such they must be considered, demographically at least, to be
‘migrants’ even if, from the points of view of international legal defi-
nitions and of managing migration, they might best be considered as
separate entities. The division clearly reflects a distinction that is often
not as clear: that between forced and voluntary population movements.
It is the purpose of this chapter to work towards a framework that can
try to encompass these various disconnects and divisions in order to link
migration more securely to the political demography mainland.
1 The other major schism in migration studies is between studies of internal migration
and studies of international migration, a division that will not be directly addressed in this
chapter, but see King and Skeldon (2010) and Skeldon (2018).
2 MIGRATION IN POLITICAL DEMOGRAPHY … 31
The chapter begins by introducing broad historical, geographical and

political themes that provide a context for the more specific and contem-
porary case material to be presented later. Population size, the role of
migration in the creation of political units and differences in these units
will all be raised. The focus, however, is on that basic building block
of our world, the state, and how migration has contributed to both its
construction and its transformation. The role of migration in nation and
state building will be considered from two points of view, exclusionary
and inclusionary, to cover both refugee and ‘voluntary’ movements.
Given that more established literature linking population movement and
political change exists on the former, greater attention in this chapter will
be given to the latter, with just a cursory discussion on refugees. The
transformation of the state will be considered in terms of immigration,
and its impact on compositional and political changes, and in the context
of emigration and the impact of the diaspora or transnational-induced
political change. Thus, state building and state transformation illustrate a
two-way interactive process, with political change giving rise to migration
and migration giving rise to political change. Some of these movements
may involve large numbers of people but it must also be emphasized that
the migration of very small numbers, perhaps even of individuals, can also
generate political change. The focus in this chapter will be on the rela-
tively recent past, between about 2000 and 2018, in both the developed
and the developing worlds.
2 Populations, Migrations and Political

Development: Broad Perspectives
At the simplest level, the sheer size of a population in the envelope of a
powerful state can project power to dominate any rivals. China, Russia
(and the former Soviet Union) and the United States of America (USA)
are the obvious examples. Less obvious, perhaps, is why relatively small
populations such as Ancient Greece, Portugal, England and Wales or the
Netherlands came to dominate significant parts of the world at particular
times. How important was demography in explaining the rise to power of
these particular countries? While the role of numbers and political power
may not always be clear, one can say that migration was central to this
process of the creation of empire.
As will be seen below, migration is central to the creation of all states
irrespective of size, not just physically, but also in terms of national
32 R. SKELDON
mythology. Implicitly or explicitly, migration is an integral part of the

narrative of state creation irrespective of what might have been occur-
ring with the other two demographic variables, fertility and mortality.
The “frontier”, the “great trek” and the “long march” are all examples of
participatory experiences, narratives that bring a sense of unity to previ-
ously disparate groups that became foundation myths of nation and state.
Long before the emergence of the modern state, circuits of mobility in the
form of pilgrimage brought widely dispersed peoples into common belief
systems around the experience of travelling to Jerusalem, Mecca, Rome,
Varanasi, Haridwar, Bodhgaya, Ise or Mount T’ai that underlay the great
world religions. Yet, migrations not only provided the basis for the iden-
tification of separate belief, imperial or state territories and populations,
they also linked them together through trade and the exchange of ideas.
Civilizations were rarely hermetically sealed units but learnt from each
other through traders and travellers, as well as through military expansion.
Conflict was central to the expansion of these separate civilizations and
to competition among them. Conflict that displaced populations and the
history of violence and forced migration runs throughout history, yet, it is
a violence that has not just fluctuated over time but has undergone a long-
term secular decline (Morris, 2014; Pinker, 2011). Violent deaths appear
to be endemic in pre-modern societies but are punctuated by periods of
more organized warfare that paradoxically lead to lower levels of violence.
Warfare might make a wasteland but the victors make the peace in which
recalcitrant populations can be stabilized and new techniques and popu-
lations introduced. Agricultural production is then increased, leading in
turn, to expanding populations that can be taxed (Morris, 2014). Groups
that were once shifting, nomadic or migratory become more sedentary
and one might argue that migration, in the sense of a shift in usual place
of residence, only takes meaning once a population becomes more seden-
tary, paradoxical though this might seem. Why these periods of warfare
to extend the peace should erupt have been attributed in various ways to
‘epochal wars’ as political systems, in one interpretation, moved progres-
sively through constitutional orders from princely states to kingly states,
territorial states, state-nations, nation states to market states (Bobbitt,
2002). The shifts in constitutional orders may have been underpinned
by successive cycles of growing inequalities that eventually exposed popu-
lations to shocks that brought about demographic and economic collapse
that would give rise to a new cycle of accumulation (Scheidel, 2017),
which included the development of new political orders.
The role of demography in conflict, with the exception of increasing

mortality, is unclear. That is, whether growing population numbers by
bringing pressure upon local resources, result in conflict in a classical
Malthusian interpretation might seem intuitive but is almost certainly
overly simplistic. Robust evidence is scarce but must come from more
recent times to test ideas about the role of population growth in polit-
ical change. Political demography has tended to focus more on the
changing population structures in terms of age and the implications for
political change. Certainly, the incidence of civil conflict appears greater
among youthful populations while democracy is more likely to emerge
in ageing, more “mature” populations (Madsen, 2012: 82). Whether a
youth bulge provides fertile ground for revolution and demand for radical
change has also been examined, particularly in the context of parts of
the Islamic world today, as part of explaining and predicting political
change (Cincotta, 2009; Urdal, 2012). However, any role for migra-
tion in this process is largely invisible. Nevertheless, as implied above,
migration was an integral part of all of these developments. The move-
ment of ‘surplus’ agrarian populations to towns and cities, the dispersal
of peoples due to conquest or fleeing epidemics, the movement of armies
and their camp followers and the excursions of pilgrims suggest societies
in constant movement. However, just how these movements in response
to changes in those same societies may have contributed to those political
changes remains unclear. Certainly, one of the few generalizations that
can be made about migration is that the majority of those who move are
young adults. Hence, one might assume that youth bulges might generate
greater incidence of human movement (Biira & Hartmann, this volume).
This chapter seeks to illustrate the ways in which migration and migrants
can contribute to this process of political change, albeit still in a tentative
and speculative way.
3 Migration and the Creation

of the State: The Exclusionary Dimension
The most explicit linkage between migration and political change, or
perhaps more exactly between refugee studies and political change, has
been in the work on forced migrants. That political conflict gives rise to
forced migration is perhaps the closest we come to a simple cause and
effect relationship in political demography. The emergence of new states
upon the dissolution of empires and decolonization has been considered
34 R. SKELDON
to be central to the creation of refugees as the new leaders pursued ideas

of nationhood and who should and should not be members (Zolberg,
1983, with a more recent review in Maley, 2016). Those who did not fit
the image of a more homogeneous state were expelled, re-educated or
otherwise dealt with.
Those expelled include two main groups: those “forced to flee for
a well-founded fear of persecution”—refugees according to the 1951
United Nations Refugee Convention2 —and asylum seekers, or those
who flee across an international border and seek recognition as refugees.
The former are de jure forced migrants recognized by the international
community and the latter are de facto but not yet recognized forced
migrants. At worst, they are considered ‘irregular migrants’ whose right
to remain in a destination has to be determined. Irrespective of these
legal differences, their migration has been driven by policies of the state
of origin to exclude groups from their territory. The majority of refugees
are both generated and found in just a few locations in the world today:
around Afghanistan, in the horn of Africa, in Central and Eastern Africa
and, most recently, around Iraq and Syria.
While the emergence of countries from years of direct external control
as a driver of major political change leading to forced population move-
ments seems well-taken, any easy association with the other population
trends in fertility and growth is more problematic. Certainly, refugees
tend not to be generated among more developed, low fertility, slow
growth populations with the majority emerging in areas of high fertility,
although exceptions certainly exist. For example, Myanmar has a total
fertility rate around the replacement level but has been engaged in the
expulsion of the Rohingya, who have a much higher fertility of around
3.8, a difference that is but one driver in the conflict (Blomquist &
Cincotta, 2016). While refugees also flee to be registered in areas of high
fertility, too, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Pakistan, they are also
found in areas of low fertility, in West Asia in the Lebanon and Turkey.
However, any high fertility/high population growth/conflict/forced
migration nexus would provide an all too simple interpretation of the
causes of political conflict and refugee production, which lie as much in
the involvement of low fertility outside powers becoming involved in real
2 Technically, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951, augmented

by a Protocol of 1967, is the key document relating to the identification and treatment
of refugees.
or perceived threats and rivalries. Low fertility Iran, for example, uses
Afghan proxies in the conflict in Syria in which low fertility Russia also
participates. Parallels in this geopolitical game can be found in the USA
and its European allies becoming involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thus, while the association between conflict and migration can be well
established through the creation of refugees, links with other dimensions
of demography appear more tenuous. Yet, a focus on conflict and forced
migration downplays the role of migration in political change, drawing
attention away from arguably more significant issues.
4 Migration and the Creation

of the State: The Inclusionary Dimension
While states seek to create their citizens through expelling some, they also
seek to include other groups, as well as consolidate control over desig-
nated territory. Thus, the state uses institutions to establish control over
previously disparate groups and marginal territories, the most important
of which are security, through conscription, and education, through the
construction of schools to which youth must move to embark upon, or
to continue, their training to be members of the larger polity. Military
recruitment, which may involve some degree of coercion, and partici-
pation in post-primary schooling both generally involve movement to
barracks or schools that are only to be found beyond the village. In
essence, circuits of migration, or more accurately of mobility, come to
define the state. These allow the control of territory, the penetration of
centralized administration, as well as the denial of entry to outsiders at
border points. The creation of national armies and a civil service brought
unified ideas that could be diffused rapidly across territory. This idea was
well captured by Arlacchi (1983: 200) displayed with the Italian case.
More recently, in the introduction to a collection of essays on states in
Africa, Quirk and Vigneswaran aver that “[a]ll states – historical and
contemporary - have consistently made sustained efforts to legitimize,
condition, discipline and profit from human mobility […] that it is neces-
sary to treat mobility as a central factor when it comes to both the
constitution and everyday operation of state authority” (2015: 6).
Migrations around urban and religious centres of soldiers and adminis-
trators are used to bring unity to a territory through the extension of the
area under effective control. In the post-colonial period, when borders
previously imposed or negotiated among external powers were bestowed
36 R. SKELDON
on newly independent governments, marginal territories were often only

notionally under control. These areas, and particularly in mountainous
or desert regions, were populated by groups that were culturally distinct
from urban and settled agricultural peoples. Political boundaries in these
regions held little meaning for long-established shifting cultivators or
nomadic herders whose way of life transcended the borders. The central
state often viewed the inhabitants of these marginal areas as ‘tribals’, ‘hill
tribes’ or ‘minorities’. Modern states find the incorporation and stabi-
lization of such populations problematic. While specific differences in
approach have varied, the common theme of land colonization emerged
across the developing world. These programmes were given strongly
developmental objectives to extend agricultural production and to give
land to the landless, while downplaying the fact that members of the
dominant groups were being settled among, or close to, groups of more
questionable loyalty or of separate identities. Apparently vacant lands, too,
were settled on the perhaps not unreasonable assumption that if they were
not settled, an ambitious neighbour might claim them instead.
Perhaps the largest example, in terms of numbers, has been the trans-
migrasi programme in Indonesia, a programme that dated from Dutch
colonial times but reached its apogee after independence from the Nether-
lands. Some 941,000 families were moved between 1969 and 1986,
primarily from the densely populated island of Java into more sparsely
populated outer islands in Sumatra, Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Irian Jaya
(Hugo et al., 1987: 179). A second case in Asia relates to the post-
reunification of Vietnam in April 1975. The government in Hanoi began
moving people from the densely populated parts of the north into more
sparsely populated lands in the central highlands, an area where consider-
able conflict had occurred during the war and where sympathies towards
the northern government might have been ambivalent. Between 1976
and 1997, over 740,000 individuals were moved into just one province,
Dak Lak, in central Vietnam (Hardy, 2003: 313). A third example is virtu-
ally all the South American republics with borders in the Amazon basin
that have pursued land colonization at one time or another as they sought
to consolidate their territories in sparsely populated areas open to dispute.
As a final example: the Chinese government has pursued a consistent ‘civ-
ilizing’ policy of moving Han populations into Muslim and Tibetan areas.
In many of these areas, land is given to retired soldiers, to those who have
served their country and will presumably promote national values in the
areas allocated to them. In all these projects, spontaneous migrants also
move into the designated zones to take advantage of established support

programmes and infrastructure and are often more committed than the
sponsored settlers to the physical hardships of settlement. Whether these
migrants have the same ideological views as the retired soldiers is not so
clear.
Thus, the circuits of mobility that created Italy, cited earlier, are
promoted by governments to make people into ‘modern’ Indonesians,
Vietnamese or Peruvians and to consolidate national territory. Polit-
ical considerations lie behind the emphasized developmental objectives.
In fact, the results of land colonization programmes are often negative
for development, with environmental damage being common following
deforestation and the discovery that logical environmental reasons existed
to explain the sparse populations of these areas in the first place. Neverthe-
less, these rural-to-rural and urban-to-rural migrations, while representing
a minority of those who moved internally, do illustrate an important
example of migration being used to promote state building.
Nevertheless, not all groups living in these marginal areas wish to be
incorporated into the state and the interesting ideas of the “art of not
being governed” and “regions of refuge” have emerged from studies
of these areas (Aguirre Beltrán, 1967; Scott, 2009; Skeldon, 1985). In
these cases, groups native to the margins migrate further into the moun-
tain fastness to escape from the intruding lowland groups in a strategy
to avoid sedentarization and incorporation into the expanding state. In
this way, they preserve their identity, which in itself is predicated upon
their continued migration. However, detailed analyses of minorities in
this situation in Southeast Asia have suggested that the real situation is
much more complicated, with the minorities seeking shifting alliances not
just with the immigrants from the lowlands but also with other minority
groups being so affected (Mazard, 2014). Nevertheless, irrespective of
the variations found, the longer-term endpoint does appear to be some
kind of incorporation into the state in a process of gradual sedentariza-
tion. Thus, migration and the control of migration have been a central
component of the creation and consolidation of the state itself. Migration
is a key narrative and the political demography of the state is essentially
one revolving around migration and mobility, a theme central to the
arguments in Vigneswaran and Quirk (2015) for states in Africa.
38 R. SKELDON
5 Migration
and the Transformation of the State
The discussion in the previous section looked primarily at internal migra-
tion and centrifugal forces of incorporation. This section deals mainly with
international migration and centripetal forces of inclusion that may lead
to the social transformation of society and the state itself. Two perspec-
tives will be adopted. The first is the political impact of immigration on
destinations and the second focuses on the impact on the places of origin
of the migration.
a. Immigration and political change—Destinations
The immigration of large numbers of migrants into a country has

captured the attention of the public, policymakers and academics alike.
It is perhaps the issue in much of the more developed parts of the world
and an issue so toxic that it has led to the downfall of governments. As
fertility has decreased and societies are well on their way through the
second demographic transition towards declining and ageing populations,
it is migration that has come to be a significant component of overall
growth. While migration cannot necessarily compensate for cohorts lost
to fertility decline, it can contribute to a slowing in the process and to
filling specific gaps in the labour market (UN, 2001, also Naumann &
Hess, this volume).
Nevertheless, a fear has arisen in the host populations that control
over the borders has been lost and that national identity is being eroded
through the arrival of so many different cultural groups. However, the
contribution that migrants make to the economies and societies of desti-
nation is highly contested. They do provide skills that local populations
lack or undertake the types of jobs that local populations are unwilling
to do. Their very presence increases demand that can generate new
jobs across a broad spectrum of activities from house building, through
retailing, to employment within small companies established by the
migrants themselves. On the other hand, migrants are seen to compete
with local workers and depress wages. They bring pressure to bear on local
education, health and housing services and on the provision of welfare.
While the real costs and benefits of migrant labour are difficult to define
and to calculate accurately, the consensus appears to be that their overall
impact, in one direction or the other, is quite small. Migrants, however,
do appear to generate more income than they consume. Variations exist

by host country and by the country of origin of migrants but in the
United Kingdom (UK), for example, a country that politically and popu-
larly became hostile to immigrants in the lead-up to the referendum on
continued membership of the EU (‘Brexit’), their contribution to the
economy has consistently been positive (Dustmann & Frattini, 2014).
Yet, the impact of the migration to most parts of the developed world
is more than just about economics and the possible positive or negative
costs and benefits. Certainly, the most common refrains in the popular
press are economic: the migrants are stealing the jobs that should go to
locals and that they are coming in order to live off the welfare systems
that are characteristic of European economies. These underlying views
are reinforced by identity politics, by a fear of the outsider and whether
“Europe can be the same with different people in it” (Caldwell, 2009).
Immigrants coming from areas of different cultures and beliefs result in
a growing feeling among the domestic population that they have ‘lost
control’ over their own lives. This fear of migrants, driven by a right-
wing press but rooted in communities that have been marginalized by the
forces of globalization, fed a xenophobia that was a factor in two of the
most profound shifts in political direction in recent history: the results of
the Brexit referendum in the UK and the 2016 election of Donald Trump
in the USA. The resurgent political right self-identifies as the saviour
of Western liberal values. Whether this trend towards populism remains
sustainable over more than just the short term in the face of the demo-
graphic transformation of their societies through low fertility, as well as
by immigration, will determine the fate of western-style democracy and
provide one of the most intriguing questions for political demography
(Polakow-Suransky, 2017).
These questions are addressed in a major study by Kaufmann (2018)
who envisages four possible scenarios: first, that the dominant group
will fight their declining numbers through right-wing conservative and
nationalist movements and resist entry of newcomers and encourage
their exclusion. Second, that the dominant group will repress its feelings
and eventually accept ongoing transition to a more varied community;
third, to flee the increasing diversity to maintain its distinctive nature
elsewhere; four, to join the incoming groups eventually through inter-
marriage to produce a mixed identity. One could possibly imagine all of
these scenarios operating concurrently and/or sequentially because none
are mutually exclusive. What is more difficult to imagine is the idea of
40 R. SKELDON
homogeneous white majorities acting as single entities. These are highly

factionalized, not the least by class, including the emergence of transna-
tional capitalist classes that transcend the more visible ethnic or racial
groupings. Classes that are created by the migration of elites through
the expansion of multinational corporations (see Sklair, 2001), but also
through globalization more generally by means of international migration
for education. The political role played by this mobile transnational class
is not so clear, although it may act as a safety valve for dissidents rather
than presenting an active challenge to national governments. Neverthe-
less, within states, dominant groups, no matter how factionalized, that
perceive they are being marginalized or even threatened by immigration
are likely to react in negative ways.
In such a highly-charged environment, it is challenging to have a
rational debate. Too many myths about migration and migrants exist.
However, accepting a neutral to positive economic interpretation of the
impact of migration on the main destinations does little to counteract the
popular image that migrants are transforming destination countries: the
rise of ethnic neighbourhoods, the construction of mosques or Hindu
temples, languages unintelligible to locals being heard on the street and
shops specializing in foreign foods and goods emerging on the high
streets. Such change might also be interpreted as enriching the mainly
urban landscapes because it is in the largest cities in any country that the
vast majority of immigrants concentrate.
It is in these urban areas that the idea of super-diversity is most mani-
fest, and a diversity, not just by place of birth or ethnicity but also within
each group based upon education, nature of employment and wealth,
too (Vertovec, 2007). This fracturing across and within groups has to be
built into the scenarios envisaged by Kaufmann (2018) above, with, for
example, only part of the host population leaving the cities because of the
diversity created by immigration. Most of the local population that leaves
the city will have specific demographics. First, young families, or those
about to have children, will be escaping inflated property prices and the
costs of childcare in the global cities more than any perceived diversity.
Second, retirees, who may also see economic incentives in the move but
who may indeed have more conservative views and consider the urban
environments to have changed dramatically from their heyday. Hence,
economic fundamentals will drive any migration from metropolitan areas,
not just increasing diversity or perceived declining political influence.
Paradoxically, the anti-immigrant rhetoric appears to be strongest in

areas away from the metropolitan areas. Much of the political reaction in
democracies has been driven by opinion either in small towns and rural
areas dominated by fairly homogeneous, middle-income and older popu-
lations or by those older working-class populations in areas that have been
left behind by the rise of the finance and technology industries central to
what is known as ‘globalization’. This debate takes us far beyond the
central concerns of political demography, but migration, or the lack of
it, is again an important component of the debate. Younger, educated
and highly mobile residents of metropolitan areas and smaller university
cities, or those who belong to the “transnational capitalist class” (Sklair,
2001), the people from “anywhere”, are in opposition to those rooted in
particular places with a clear sense of identity from “somewhere” (Good-
hart, 2017). This great divide in the politics of the anglophone world
has its parallels in the divergence between the metropolitan classes in
their citadels and those in the periphery in modern France: a divergence
that may bring about the “twilight of the elites” of neoliberalism through
flight from resurgent populism (Guilluy, 2019). Whatever the outcome,
the evolving tensions between metropolitan and national governments
will be one of the key global challenges of the twenty-first century.
This divide essentially reflects a rural-urban distribution of population
and should surely be an important dimension of political demography as
both mobility and migration policy are central to a full understanding
of the issue. The progressive upward concentration of the young and
educated through “escalators” of internal migration gave rise to high rates
of social mobility (Fielding, 1992) in metropolitan regions that, in turn,
have acted as nodes in transnational migration systems. This mix created
cosmopolitan populations with very different political values from those in
the rural hinterlands and is presenting searching questions for the future
of national systems of democracy in the western world.
The impact of migration on destination areas has one other and more
obviously demographic implication. Given the sharp decline in fertility
across much of the developed world and the tendency for the majority of
migrants to be young adults, an increasing proportion of the total number
of births is to migrant women. In the UK, for example, about one quarter
of all births are to foreign-born mothers, and this proportion is consid-
erably higher in London. The frequency of intermarriage among groups
is also increasing (Kaufmann’s fourth scenario) both between native and
immigrant populations and among members of the immigrant groups
42 R. SKELDON
themselves, even if this intermarriage is variable by group. The prospect of

states becoming multi-ethnic through a combination of immigration and
the reproduction of immigrants have led to the idea of a “third demo-
graphic transition” in these societies of sustained low fertility (Coleman,
2006). Nevertheless, subsequent modelling has suggested that any trend
towards a totally “mixed” population and a modification of the dominant
European identity is likely to be a very long process indeed (Coleman,
2012).
Perhaps as important as the immigration are cohort effects among
both migrants and locals. Immigration produces change and the younger
generation is more responsive to change and the acceptance of new
ideas and values. Hence, later generations of migrants arrive into a very
different type of society compared with that of their predecessors. Assim-
ilation takes on a more nuanced meaning. Both, the host and immigrant
populations assimilate to the new realities. Through their adjustment to
the arrival city, the previous generation of migrants set up new ideas of
what it means to be an “American” (or British, or German), to which
the later generations of migrants have to adjust. Nevertheless, these rela-
tively short-term cultural shifts, termed “relational assimilation” (Jiménez,
2017: 10–12), may ultimately be of lesser importance to institutional
change. It is the institutions of liberalism and democracy and the shared
experience that brought these about that determine the values and ulti-
mately the identity of peoples. It is the protection of these values, which
will be the ultimate responsibility of governments, that is fundamental if
the identities of Europe or America are to persist. If this can be achieved,
and it is an ‘if’, the idea of ‘a Europe’ will be able to remain, even
with different people in it. The way host populations and immigrants are
identified and classified by governments, and the way that they see them-
selves, are constantly changing and being re-negotiated as they create new
populations or “shifting boundaries of belonging” (Pries, 2013).
b. Emigration, diaspora, democratization and change—Origins
The diaspora, or the transnational community of migrants outside their

country of origin, is seen as a source of both money and skills that can
aid development at home in the form of remittances and returned skills
(Kuznetsov & Sabel, 2006; Lucas, 2014). Much less examined is the role
of the diaspora in political development and particularly whether these
migrants can play a role in the spread of democratic or more participa-

tory systems. This consideration is part of the broader debate in migration
and development that covers both remittances, in this case social or rather
political remittances, and diaspora and the return of the skilled. Essen-
tially, this section examines, in a speculative way, the impact that the
ideas migrants have gained either in the city, nationally or internationally,
have had on the politics of their home areas upon their return. Do they
use these ideas to change their societies, either violently through revolu-
tion, or progressively through bureaucratic or political process? The data
needed to answer this question remain elusive but are sufficient to be
indicative.
Whether migrants in the diaspora can influence the direction of polit-
ical transformation will largely depend upon the nature of both the
origin and the destinations of the migration. Where migrants come from
relatively poor groups in origin areas and are recruited as labourers to
countries with authoritarian systems, their political impact on home areas
is likely to be low, as in the case of South Asians in Gulf states. However,
in cases where groups in the origin areas are more highly educated,
perhaps even more so than in destination areas, they can play a major
role. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated in cases of internal migra-
tion as in examples in the more developed world, such as the Scot in the
UK (Stenhouse, 2005) or Georgians in the former Soviet Union (Scott,
2016).
The evidence from the developing world of elites going overseas for
education and experience is suggestive, if contradictory. Evidence from
a large panel data set of students from a diversity of origins indicates
that they can promote democratic reforms on their return home but
only in those cases where they received their training in open demo-
cratic countries (Spilimbergo, 2009). Another large-scale study of leaders
from more authoritarian regimes who have subsequently returned seems
to associate this with a trend towards more open and democratic systems
of government during their leadership (Mercier, 2016). In these cases,
however, institutional political change could have begun to emerge in
the origin countries that encouraged the migrants to return in the first
place and consequently provided more fertile ground on which their polit-
ical ideas could flourish. In the specific case of Mali, those who returned
from France and Côte d’Ivoire had different political perceptions, both
one from the other, and from those who had never migrated (Chauvet
et al., 2016). In this case, the institutions in destination areas were clearly
44 R. SKELDON
significant in producing different political aspirations: those from more

advanced economies with longer residence were more likely to promote
effective change than those from neighbouring countries. The return
migration to Mali was associated with increasing participation in elections,
not just because of the increasing number of returnees themselves but also
because of the diffusion of the ideas brought by the returnees and their
adoption by those who had not migrated (Chauvet & Mercier, 2014).
As the demographic giant and second largest economy in the world,
the example of China provides a useful perspective. In 2012–2013, it was
estimated that there was a stock of 712,157 Chinese students overseas,
a sharp increase from 417,351 in 2005–2006, with a flow of 523,700
leaving China in 2015 alone (IIE, 2021). The principal destination by
far was the USA, followed by the UK and Australia. The majority do
return and, taking a longer-term perspective, it is estimated that since the
reforms that were initiated from late 1978 on, over 4.5 million Chinese
students had studied abroad, with some 82% returning to China, with
the incidence of return increasing over time (Fan, 2017). While students
are not the only return migrants who could be involved in political
change, they are among the largest and, as educated citizens, among
the most influential. A study published in 2006 (He, 2006) argued that,
although the returned students did not advocate radical political change,
they would play a significant role in transforming China. Yet the situ-
ation appears to have changed since then. Economically, so many have
returned that an overseas degree, unless from one of the best universities
in the most applied subjects, no longer has the earning power it once had
(Fan, 2017). However, politically China seems to have embarked upon
a transition very different from that of the West. It would be too easy
to fall back on an argument of Chinese exceptionalism but it also gives
pause to drawing equally easy conclusions about returning migrants from
developed economies and the promotion of democratic values.
Despite these contradictory findings, the diaspora is increasingly seen
as a means to extend the state transnationally through incorporating
citizens living abroad as part of the electorate. The initiative may orig-
inally have emerged in the diaspora itself when exiles abroad actively
sought to support the liberation of their homelands and/or facilitate the
building of independent nations. However, more recently, origin states
themselves have created institutional frameworks to allow their citizens
overseas to be stakeholders in their countries of birth even though they
no longer live there. The most comprehensive examination of this evolu-

tion of diaspora organizations and their political role to date is by Gamlen
(2019), although see also the essays in Délano Alonso and Mylonas
(2019). Perhaps the most striking factor to emerge from this literature
is the recency of the establishment of these institutions, not just as a
means towards the management of migration, but as political models
of transnational citizenship that transcend the borders of the traditional
state.
Thus, the diaspora contributes to a more developmental view in
harnessing the potential offered by managing migration through remit-
tances and leveraging talent. On the other hand, its political involvement
in conflict in home countries has also attracted attention. Conflict itself
can add to, or even create, a diaspora by generating numbers who flee
overseas to create groups that do not have the interests of home govern-
ments at heart and which will actively seek to undermine them. The
uses of remittances to promote conflict at home through the purchase
of arms and the training of armed groups appear logical consequences
for which researchers have sought explanations in terms of diaspora size
or length of establishment in destination country (Collier & Hoeffler,
2004). Subsequent research, however, has produced contradictory results
that suggest that remittances, through sustaining livelihoods, can “better
prepare populations for peace” (Brinkerhoff, 2011: 135). Thus, dias-
poras can act as both a peace-wrecking and a peace-building institution,
depending upon a number of factors among which the degree of frag-
mentation of the diaspora, as well as its various capabilities to seek support
from wider political interests, are important.
Wide-ranging global, more statistical approaches to the association
of the volume of emigration with political change in origin countries,
although without the association with transnational interaction, can be
found in Docquier et al. (2016) and Moses (2011). The results showed
that the emigration of nationals was associated with shifts to more open
societies at home, although, like the students studied by Spilimbergo
(2009) above, those emigrants had to go to more open OECD countries
in order for that association to be significant. Hence, the so-called South-
South migration, which according to World Bank estimates was larger
at 93.1 million in 2013 than South-North migration at 84.3 million,
46 R. SKELDON
may not be such a major factor in promoting political change across the
developing world.3
The importance of the nature of the specific destinations for the
emigrants was also shown in a detailed micro-study in Moldova where
the migration to European destinations was clearly associated with voting
behaviour against the communist party in the villages of origin, which
ultimately led to the fall of the last communist government in Europe,
whereas no such association could be seen in those villages where migrants
had gone to Russia (Barsbai et al., 2017). However, the important exam-
ples of China and some other countries must always give pause. Moses
is perhaps the more ambivalent, noting that even if a role in the past for
emigration leading to political change can be identified, because of the
relatively small proportions of populations emigrating, the “likelihood of
emigration playing a subsequent role in political development is limited”
(Moses, 2011: 232).
Returning to the inclusion of transnational interactions through dias-
pora involvement, a wide-ranging review of evidence has led to the
mathematical formulation of a model that appears to be consistent with
the various outcomes of diaspora involvement in conflict in origin coun-
tries as either peace-wrecking or peace-building (Mariani et al., 2018).
The relative sizes of diaspora promote conflict but, in so doing, cause the
other side to invest more in men and material, thus increasing the cost
of the war that may ultimately lead to a negotiated settlement. However,
much more research is required, particularly on the degree of faction-
alism within diasporas and how these groups vary not just in terms of
education and identity with the home area, but also in how they seek
support from outside powers and in destination countries, but also multi-
laterally, in order to prosecute their interests. Nevertheless, it is the ideas
circulating within the diaspora that are important for both economic and
political change and, as these may not be best measured through the
aggregate number of emigrants or the size of diasporas, it is to the role
of individuals that we must now turn.
c. Individuals in a matrix of institutions
Within these broad diaspora institutions, the agency of individual and

small groups of migrants have had a profound impact on political change
in areas of origin, particularly in radical or revolutionary change. Among
3 Estimates for the number of international migrants are taken from World Bank (2016).
the majority of migrants who move short-term or circulate between

village and city are a few who seek to enter more long-term into the urban
environment. Some fail, perhaps rejected by urban society, others simply
return later to try to apply their new knowledge in their villages of origin
in order to recreate a new society. Perhaps the most famous example of
the rejected migrant was Hong Xiu-quan, who became the leader of the
Taiping rebellion that devastated much of south-central China between
1840 and 1864, but many smaller examples of such messianic movements
exist, and particularly in the small islands of the Pacific. Certain common
features appear to apply: the leaders are charismatic; they come from the
middle-upper echelons of their respective societies, they are perhaps better
educated and aspiring; they have grievances that they attribute to immi-
grant groups but they also feel that they can use their understanding of
these same groups to overturn the established order to create the new
heaven and new earth. The movements are almost always destructive
rather than constructive. In Hong’s case, he was also from a minority
group, the Hakka. A particular combination of factors is thus required
and the movements appear to occur at relatively early phases in the evolu-
tion of a migration system and shortly after initial contact with external
groups. The role of the circular migrant as a catalyst in this process is
discussed in more detail elsewhere (Skeldon, 1987).
The migrant as a driver of political change can also be seen at the
international level and here the resultant movements can be as much
constructive as destructive. These movements can also be conceptual-
ized as being part of the diaspora from any group and are often linked
to the colonial policy of educating the elites of the time. For example,
Ho Chi Minh was only one of the more prominent returnees to embark
upon, initially a nationalist and then a communist, struggle, but he was
only one of many Vietnamese in France at the time among the “revo-
lutionaries they could not break” (Ngo, 1995). Others from countries
that were never under direct colonial rule such as Deng Xiao Ping, Zhou
Enlai and the earlier Sun Yat-sen all spent time overseas, the former in the
Paris commune, Zhou in the UK, France and Germany, and the latter in
London as well as Japan. The leaders of the Thai revolution of 1932,
Pridi, Phibun and Prayoon had also been in France and Lee Kwan Yew,
Jinnah Gandhi and Nehru had been in London. It was not just the elites
who were important in the establishment of revolutionary and indepen-
dence movements. Ordinary Chinese who had gone to France as coolies
during the First World War “returned to China, literate and wise in the
48 R. SKELDON
ways of the world, often with a decent balance of cash stored up safely
with their families […] would be in a position to play a new kind of
active role in Chinese politics” (Spence, 1990: 292–293). One of the few
scholars to have considered the importance of migratory experience for
revolutionary leaders has been Moses (2011: 197–219), who, building
initially upon the earlier record of Goldstone (1999), showed that virtu-
ally two-thirds of two separate samples of 73 and 115 leaders, widely
separated in both time and space, had been migrants before embarking
upon their exploits. This indeed seems to indicate the past and continuing
role of the return migrant in political change.
While the impact of migrants in these movements is clear, it is not
just a return into roles in revolutionary and independence movements
that migrants can play. They also move into ‘normal’ parliamentary life.
For example, in 2006, 25 of the 45 members of the cabinet in Taiwan
had completed advanced degrees outside Taiwan, mainly in the USA but
also in Japan, France and the UK. It is known, although numbers are
largely unavailable and certainly vary over time, that migrants return to
play a role in the administration of countries, in the civil service and also
in civil society. While specific impacts are difficult to measure, migration,
as a component of political demography, is an integral part of the polit-
ical development of both developing and developed countries and the
role of what some would term “political remittances” have yet to be fully
understood.4
6 Conclusion: Towards More Systematic

Approaches to Migration in Political Demography
This chapter has attempted to sketch an approach to bring migration,
both internal and international, into political demography through an
examination of the literature on how the state both creates, and is created
by, migration. It has not examined the literature on the more specific
topic of migration policy through which states attempt to manage migra-
tion and which has emerged as a significant sub-field within migration
4 On political remittances, see Tabar and Maalouf (2016).

studies.5 In looking at the role of the state, this chapter has consid-
ered both exclusionary, essentially the expulsion of refugees and asylum
seekers, and inclusionary dimensions. Within the latter, it examined how
migrants make the state through circuits of mobility and through the
incorporation of new populations. It also considered the other side of
the coin, how migrants can modify and transform the state by impacting
upon race, ethnicity and class, as well as ideas. The role of the diaspora in
promoting political change at home was examined within the context of
transnational citizenship. Finally, case studies of individual return migrants
to states of origin are briefly described to provide examples of their various
roles in revolutionary political change.
Research into migration shows that it changes over time: destina-
tions and origins change associated with development. Over the longue
durée, and at the highest level of generalization, Europe evolved from
a region of net outmigration to one of net immigration, for example.
However, specific shifts over shorter time periods for specific areas have
also been identified, with these shifts diffusing across space through time
(Skeldon, 1990, 1997, 2012). As patterns of migration evolve over time
and across space, can these then be associated with the shifting patterns of
mortality and fertility that make up the demographic transition in a way
first hypothesized by Zelinsky (1971)? In turn, can these demographic
shifts then be associated with political change in any systematic way?
We are probably some way from satisfactorily answering these ques-
tions, but political demography is surely well placed to attempt to address
them. Although still strongly focused on the impact of shifting patterns
of fertility and resulting changes in age structures, migration is an integral
part of the work of those who study political demography (see Kauf-
mann, 2018 and the essays in Goldstone, 2012, for example). However,
this integration is associated primarily with immigration in the context
of ageing populations and the potential for conflict among migrant and
ethnic groups rather than a broader search for linkages among the three
demographic variables and how these might be related to changes in
political systems. Given that most migrants are young adults, the role of
migration or mobility in youth bulges, for example, needs much further
examination. The political implications of declining internal migration
5 For comprehensive introductions to the particular field of migration governance by

a range of authors, see Czaika and De Haas (2013), Hollifield et al. (2014), and Betts
(2011).
50 R. SKELDON
seen across much of the developed world (Champion et al., 2018) and
the increasing tensions between national and urban governance described
above provide other pressing questions for states in these areas.
Political demography, as its name implies, accords primacy to exam-
ining demographic change in all three of its components, fertility,
mortality and migration, and political change. The other side of the coin,
that political change can impact upon all three variables in terms of the
types of policies implemented by governments and their consequences at
national, local and multilateral levels, is well studied. However, so too
can demographic change have impact upon political change. This chapter
has attempted to review the main ways in which migration can impact
upon that political change, with other chapters in this book outlining
how all three variables interact with political systems in other parts of
the world. Using demographic change as a lens through which to view
political change not only brings political systems more fully into debates
that so often accord priority to economic and social change but also
provides a different perspective in the whole population and development
debate. Optimistically, this book and this chapter may contribute towards
improving the representation of political demography in this debate.
Acknowledgements I am grateful for the comments of two anonymous referees

on an earlier draft of this paper and for long conversations on this topic on
several occasions with my colleague at the ICMPD Summer Schools in Azer-
baijan and Georgia, Dr. Biagio Speciale. The paper is much improved through
these interventions, although they cannot be held responsible for the final
interpretations.
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holder.
CHAPTER 3
Youthful Age Structures and the Risks

of Revolutionary and Separatist Conflicts
Richard Cincotta and Hannes Weber
1 Introduction
Concerns focused on the political instability of states with persistent
high fertility and large cohorts of young adults—what some have called
a “youth bulge” (e.g. Urdal, 2006; Weber, 2018)—are really nothing
new. Inspired by the theorizations of Coale and Hoover (1958), Herbert
Möller (1968–1969) convincingly argued that the unprecedented surge
of young men into Europe’s rapidly growing population during the mid-
nineteenth century contributed to the ease of recruitment, the rise of
militarism and the high frequency of political rebellion and war on the

R. Cincotta (B)
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, USA
e-mail: rcincotta@stimson.org
H. Weber
University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_3
58 R. CINCOTTA AND H. WEBER
continent. Möller’s theorization laid the foundations for later historical

research on fertility and age structure’s role in rebellions during the early
modern era (Goldstone, 1991), and for more recent efforts to strengthen
the conceptual and statistical understanding of vulnerabilities to intrastate
conflict that are associated with a state’s position in the age-structural
transition.1
The objective of the following article is to address two research
questions that recognize inconsistencies and gaps in the current theory:
Q 1: Does the youth bulge model apply equally to both non-

territorial intrastate conflicts (revolutions) and territorial
conflicts (separatist conflicts)?
Q 2: Does a state’s recent conflict history differentially affect the
risk of intrastate conflict in various parts of the age-structural
transition?
The first research question (Q1 ) reflects the results of a recent study by
Yair and Miodownik (2016). They conclude that the presence of a rela-
tively large country-level youth bulge2 statistically explains the onset of
recent non-ethnic armed conflict. However, they find that this measure
fails to explain the onset of ethnic conflict. Moreover, observational
evidence appears to support their findings. Examples of ethnic sepa-
ratist conflicts emerging in non-youthful states abound. These include
armed separatist conflicts in eastern Ukraine, in Russia’s Caucasus region,
in the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, in Thai-
land’s Pattani Muslim region and in Bosnia in the 1990s. In each case,
deep ethnic and religious cleavages and a resilient minority identity
remain tightly coupled to unresolved ethnic grievances and incompati-
bilities, despite the advancement of the country-level age structure and
the economic and social development that typically accompanies this
demographic shift.
1 The age-structural transition describes the transition from a population numerically

dominated by children, adolescents and young adults, to distributions with large propor-
tions of older adults and seniors (cf. Cincotta et al., 2003; Goldstone, 2002, 2012; Hegre
et al., 2013; Leahy et al., 2007; Mesquida & Weiner, 1999; Sciubba, 2011, 2012; Urdal,
2006, 2012).
2 This is measured as the proportion of young adults, ages 15–24, in the adult
population.
3 YOUTHFUL AGE STRUCTURES AND THE RISKS OF REVOLUTIONARY … 59
The latter research question (Q2 ) relates to the observation that most
revolutions (non-territorial conflicts) arising in states with mature popu-
lations are brief, as opposed to those among youthful states, which tend
to persist or frequently re-emerge. For example, the decline of the Soviet
Union precipitated two non-territorial revolts in two non-youthful states,
both lasting under two weeks and both enduring a significant number
of battle-related deaths: a successful revolution in Romania, in December
of 1989, and, in late September and early October of 1993, a decisive
showdown over constitutional powers in Russia. In July 2016, armed
violence associated with an attempted coup in Turkey ended in just two
days. While politically pivotal events in terms of their duration, they
contrast sharply with the numerous decades-long revolts that sub-Saharan
states have recently endured, or with the 4 or 5 that have dragged
on in Latin America through much of the latter part of the twentieth
century (UCDP/PRIO, 2018). Nonetheless, analysts have yet to deter-
mine whether variation in age structure statistically affects the duration of
revolutionary conflict—a dynamic that is every bit as critical to diplomatic
and defence policymakers as the risk of its onset.
The research described in this chapter revises the youth bulge hypoth-
esis by disaggregating cases by conflict type and by recent conflict history.
The methodology employed is age-structural modelling (Cincotta, 2012,
2017), an application of logistic regression analysis structured to generate
readily interpretable, repeatable and testable two-dimensional probability
functions in the age-structural domain, M, an x-axis representing the
path of the age-structural transition. We check the validity of these
models by testing extended models, which feature independent vari-
ables that are hypothetical competitors of median age. We also present
panel models that include country and year-fixed effects to explore the
issue of unobserved heterogeneity. Finally, we use the (United States)
National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) four-phase system to determine if
the patterns expected by hypotheses that are posed in this study are visu-
ally apparent in the observed data, both within the sample (1975–2010)
and beyond the sample (2011–present) (NIC, 2012).
The chapter’s analysis indicates that a youthful country-level age struc-
ture is indicative of an elevated risk of onset and a high risk of an
intermittent or persistent revolutionary conflict , which is defined as a non-
territorial intrastate conflict in the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Data
Set (2018) (UCDP/PRIO-ACDS) where the ultimate objective of oppo-
sition forces is to alter the political form of the central government or to
replace or modify its regime. Movement out of the youthful portion of

the age-structural transition turns out to be an excellent predictor of a
decline in the risk of a future revolution. A simple model of this dynamic
forecasts a very slow, erratic decline in the five-year count of states in
revolutionary conflict, from now until 2040.
Our analyses also indicated that a statistically significant decline related
to the country-level age structure can be expected for separatist conflicts
defined as an intrastate conflict in which the armed opposition aims to
alter the political status of a territory (i.e. a territorial conflict, as disaggre-
gated by UCDP/PRIO’s data). However, the statistical risk gradients of
models of this type of conflict are very shallow, suggesting that measures
of country-level age structure are typically poor predictors of separatist
conflict onset or termination. This analysis suggests that armed sepa-
ratist conflict has a much higher probability of persisting or re-emerging,
despite the majority’s progress through the age-structural transition.
Thus, we see no way to confidently predict trends in separatist conflict
using population age structure. However, we note that the trend in the
number of states engaged in separatist conflict has been on the rise since
2014.
2 Theory
Theoretical expectations that relate human population age structure to
the risk of various forms of conflict are part of a larger body of theory
referred to as the age-structural theory of state behaviour (Cincotta,
2017). According to this theory, the probabilities of realizing certain
social, economic and political conditions shift as the population moves
through the age-structural transition.
This article employs a discrete four-phase classification system, devel-
oped from a schema conceived by Malmberg and Lindh (2006: 68). Each
of the four phases is defined in terms of country-level median age, a scalar
measure used by population biologists and demographers to crudely char-
acterize and compare the age distributions of populations. This system is
based on country-level median age, m (the age of the person for whom
50% of the population is younger). The system divides the transition into
four discrete phases: youthful (m ≤ 25.5 years), intermediate (25.6 ≤ m
≤ 35.5 years), mature (35.6 ≤ m ≤ 45.5 years) and post-mature (m ≥
45.6 years).
2.1 The Youth Bulge Hypothesis

Put simply, proponents of the youth bulge hypothesis postulate that
states with populations where there are large proportions of young adults
in the adult population—i.e. states in the youthful phase of the age-
structural transition—are expected to face an elevated risk of political
violence and intrastate conflict, whether perpetrated by non-state or state
actors (Urdal, 2006; Mesquida & Weiner, 1999). States that experience
sustained declines in fertility and enter the transition’s intermediate phase
are expected to face substantially reduced risks of conflict. In recent
history, states that have ultimately entered the intermediate phase, have
first dropped below a total fertility rate (TFR) of about 2.8 children per
woman (Cincotta, 2017).
Since its earliest elaboration (Möller, 1968–1969), proponents of the
youth bulge hypothesis have focused on the ease of mobilizing idealistic,
risk-taking young-adult males where alternative options for economic and
social mobility are perceived as limited (Goldstone, 1991; Fuller & Pitts,
1990; Huntington, 1997).3 Generally, the hypothesis has been coupled
to the recognition that states with the pyramid-shaped age structures,
which is characteristic of a youthful population (e.g. Nigeria’s age struc-
ture, depicted in Fig. 1), face upward pressures on demand for health
care, education, jobs and basic infrastructure, but typically demonstrate
low levels of state capacity and political stability. Due to these character-
istics, youth bulge countries are often expected to experience relatively
high rates of out-migration (Weiner & Teitelbaum, 2001: 17–21).
2.2 Hypotheses
The study tests six hypotheses: three concerning revolutionary conflicts
and three concerning separatist conflicts. Each hypothesis is a statistical
expectation of a trend in the five-year probability of a state being in
conflict (either revolutionary or separatist) over the length of the age-
structural domain, M, measured in median age. To limit the spikes and
troughs that are characteristics of the annual count of states in intrastate
conflict, the five-year count is used to predict the risk of intrastate conflict.
For revolutionary conflict:
3 For a critique of this argument see Sommers (2011) and for a reply, Cincotta (2018).
Fig. 1 Population pyramids. Examples of the (U.S.) NIC’s four age-structural

phases (NIC, 2017). The data represent the proportions of five-year groups
(males on the left, females on the right) in the total population and are projec-
tions drawn from the United Nations Department of Social Affairs, Population
Division, 2017; hereafter cited as UNPD, 2017; medium fertility variant for the
year 2025. The four phases are (from left to right): youthful [YTH] (Nigeria);
intermediate [INT] (Morocco); mature [MAT] (USA); and post-mature [PMT]
(Japan)
H 1: The five-year risk of revolutionary conflict declines among states

that have not recently experienced revolutionary conflict as their
median age increases (i.e., as the age structure matures and the
youth bulge dissipates).
H 2: The five-year risk of revolutionary conflict will be greater among
states that have recently experienced revolutionary conflict.
H 3: Despite a recent history of persistent revolutionary conflict, the
five-year risk of revolutionary conflict will decline as median age
increases.
For separatist conflicts:
H 4: The five-year risk of a territorial conflict declines among states

that have not recently experienced territorial conflict as their
median age increases.
H 5: The five-year risk of territorial conflict will be greater among
states that have recently experienced territorial conflict.
H 6: Despite a recent history of persistent territorial conflict, the
five-year risk of territorial conflict will decline as median age
increases.
3 Methods
Age-structural modelling repositions state behaviours—i.e. categorical
political, social and economic conditions—that occur over the course of
chronological time, T, onto M, a domain that represents the path of
the age-structural transition (Cincotta, 2012, 2017). Rather than attempt
to discern causality, the methodology’s objective is to generate a set of
readily interpretable two-dimensional graphic models that portray the
probability of observing a discrete category of social, economic or polit-
ical behaviour, π, among states across a range of median ages, m, that
span the age-structural transition. These graphs are designed to visually
provide analysts with expectations that help to: (a) improve their current
assessments; (b) identify unexpected behaviours; and (c) statistically antic-
ipate the future. Their use by analysts provides a continuous test of the
age-structural models from which these expectations were generated.
Age-structural modelling employs logistic regression analysis to statis-
tically transform a set of dichotomous observations made among states,
to a simple logistic function, π (m), in the age-structural domain, M. For
each state, each yearly datum includes:
• the dichotomous observation of an outcome variable, π, which

records the absence (0) or presence of a categorical condition (1);
• the quantitative observation of the domain variable, m, which is
measured in years of median age;
• dichotomous observations of independent control variables, C i ,
C i+1, …, C j , which set apart the effects of exogenous factors that are
known (from previous studies) to statistically explain the outcomes
of exceptional cases; and
• dichotomous observations of experimental variables, E j , E j +1, …,
E n , which are hypothesized to statistically explain differences in
outcomes.
For age-structural models, the estimated logit,g(m) is represented as:

j−1
n

g(m) = b0 + b1 m + (bi C i ) + bj E j
i=2 j
when fit by iteration to the set of dichotomous observations of states,

the logistic regression algorithm yields a dependent variable, π (m), read
on the vertical axis as the likelihood of observing the discrete categorical

outcome in the age-structural domain.
eg(m)
π (m) =
1 + eg(m)
The categorical outcome of the model (referred to as the outcome vari-
able) can be either a discrete condition (e.g. a country that will experience
a revolutionary conflict during next five calendar years) or a discretely
bounded category within the transition of a continuous indicator (e.g.
less than 25.0 childhood deaths per 1,000 live births).
Besides computing the fitted parameter values and their standard
errors, commercial software typically computes the probability function,
π (m)—in this research, referred to as the age-structural function—and
The plotted cumulative proportion (points) and smoothed cumulative distribu-

tion function (CDF) are shown for the underage-five mortality rate of less than
25.0 deaths per 1,000 live births. The CDF, π (m), was estimated using logistic
regression. Its first derivative, π (m), is expected to peak at π (m) = 0.50(Max).
E marks early attainers, and L marks late holdouts (also see online Appendix
A.3.2)
its upper and lower 0.95 confidence intervals. To communicate the prob-
ability of a state being a member of this category over the length of
the age-structural domain, M, the corresponding probability function is
plotted over the present range of country-level median ages (currently a
median age of 15.0–47.0 years, although M extends to 55.0 years).
In addition to a (pooled) logistic regression, we also present panel
models including country- and year-fixed effects. Usually one of the most
important questions in cross-country comparative research is the issue of
unobserved heterogeneity. Countries differ with regard to a large number
of socio-economic, demographic, political, historical, cultural and other
factors, and many of these potential explanatory variables are often highly
co-linear (e.g. see Schrodt, 2014). This makes it difficult to attribute
differences in the risk of violent conflict between countries to specific
independent variables. A popular approach to remedy this issue is the
within-transformation, most often referred to as the fixed-effects esti-
mator in econometric terminology. Rather than looking at differences
between countries, a fixed-effects approach examines differences within
each country over time. For our application, the crucial question is
whether a country’s risk of experiencing violent conflict decreases during
times when median age is below the long-term average value of the same
country.
With a binary outcome, including fixed effects into panel regression
models becomes less trivial but feasible. We estimate the conditional
logit model discussed in Allison (2009) and implemented in the survival
package (Therneau, 2015) in R (R Core Team, 2019). We replicated
the results using the binary fixed effects (bife) package (Stammann et al.,
2016) which applies an analytical bias correction to an unconditional logit
model. Since the results are virtually identical, we only report the findings
from conditional logit models (Tables 1 and 2).
3.1 The Sample

As a matter of consistent practice, the list of recognized independent
political entities is drawn from the United Nations (UN). From this
list, two types of entities were eliminated from the analysis: (1) non-
independent political entities (e.g. Palestine, Western Sahara) whose state
behaviour may be constrained or induced by an occupying power; and (2)
independent states with a population under 500,000 (including Belize,
Iceland, Brunei and numerous small island states).
66
Table 1 Panel models of revolutionary conflict, 1975–2010a
Model
Pooled logit Fixed effects conditional logit
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Median ageb −0.128*** −0312*** −0.247*** −0.309*** −0.256*** −0.315*** −0 269*** −0330***
(0.018) (0.043) (0.046) (0.067) (0.047) (0.069) (0.047) (0.069)
Population <5.0 −0.321*
millionc,d (0.138)
Oil + mineral rents 0.441*
>15% of GDPc (0.174)
R. CINCOTTA AND H. WEBER
0 conflicts −2.030*** −2.025*** −3.211*** −3.638***

(0.196) (0.226) (0.236) (0.292)
1 or 2 conflictsc 2.954*** 1.832*** 1.744*** −1.392*** −1.920***
(0.221) (0.215) (0.246) (0.303) (0.368)
3 or 4 conflictsc 4.175*** 2.704*** 3.043*** 1.066*** 1.407***
(0.177) (0.201) (0.243) (0.243) (0.291)
GDP/cap (log)b −0.312* 2.605*** 2.707*** 2.658***
(0.132) (0 641) (0.654) (0.658)
Late secondary 0.218 −5.541** −5.896** −6.178**
attainmentb (0.350) (2.068) (2.112) (2.134)
Anocracy (Partly Free)c −0.067 0.201 0.243 0.263
(0.113) (0.169) (0.172) (0.173)
Ethnolinguistic 0.647*
heterogeneity (ELF[1])b (0.282)
Constant 1.416
(0.416)
Country fixed effects No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Model
3

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Year fixed effects No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
N 4133 5355 5240 4249 5240 4249 5240 4249
Log Likelihood −1184 −1064 −896 −686 −876 −669 −875 −667
*p < 0.050, **p < 0.010, ***p < 0.00l, Standard errors in parentheses
a Data from 2011 to 2015 were withheld from the analysis for out-of-sample testing; b Continuous variable, c Dichotomous variable, d Not resource
reliant (oil + mineral rents ≤15.0% of GDP)
YOUTHFUL AGE STRUCTURES AND THE RISKS OF REVOLUTIONARY …
67
68
Table 2 Panel models of separatist (territorial) conflict, 1975–2010a
Model
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Median ageb 0.058** −0.226*** −0.218*** −0.418*** −0.232*** −0.426*** −0.239*** −0.425***
(0.023) (0.050) (0.055) (0.098) (0.057) (0.100) (0.057) (0.100)
Population <5.0 −1.542***
millionb,d (0.294)
Oil + mineral rents 0.765**
>15% of GDPc (0.234)
R. CINCOTTA AND H. WEBER
0 conflictsc −2.918*** −2.640*** −4.243*** −4.348***

(0.357) (0.380) (0.379) (0.426)
1 or 2 conflictsc 4.354*** 2.635*** 2.430*** −1607** −1.943***
(0.374) (0.394) (0.423) (0.511) (0.561)
3 or 4 conflictsc 5.473*** 3.574*** 3.788*** 1.208** 1.680***
(0.243) (0.311) (0.361) (0.390) (0.432)
GDP/cap (log) −0.757*** 5.929*** 5.859*** 5.603***
(0.191) (1.337) (1.353) (1.339)
Late secondary −1.059* −1.515 −1.664 −1.816
attainmentb (0.498) (3.080) (3.130) (3.111)
Anocracy (Partly Free)c 0.372* −0.002 −0.031 −0.080
(0.167) (0.273) (0.277)
Model
3

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Ethnolinguistic 2.027***
heterogeneity (ELF[1])b (0.414)
Constant −2.002
(0.545)
Country fixed effects No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year fixed effects No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
N 4131 5311 5198 4247 5198 4247 5198 4247
Log Likelihood −670 −515 −376 −288 −362 −278 −362 −280
*p < 0.050, **p < 0.010, ***p < 0.001 Standard errors in parentheses
a Data from 2011 to 2015 were withheld from the analysis for out-of-sample testing; b Continuous variable, c Dichotomous variable, d Not resource
reliant (oil + mineral rents ≤15.0% of GDP)
YOUTHFUL AGE STRUCTURES AND THE RISKS OF REVOLUTIONARY …
69
A substantial number of states have entered the active data set between
1975 and 2010. These include several states, which became part of the
data pool the year that they surpassed a population of 500,000 (e.g.
Bhutan, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Solomon Islands) and
a large group of newly independent states (e.g. Eritrea, former Soviet
republics, former Yugoslav republics, Slovak Republic, South Sudan,
Timor-Leste). Thus, the annual active data set has grown from 136 states
in 1975 to 166 in 2018.
The use of states as the unit of analysis has several analytical limitations.
The country-level median age may obfuscate the presence of significantly
populous minorities who display demographic dynamics differing substan-
tially from the majority. Even when the country-level age structure has
matured, minority-majority demographic differences can be associated
with ethnic tensions (Leuprecht 2010; Cincotta, 2011).
3.2 Temporal Extent of Data

The age-structural models generated in this research are built upon data
assembled from international agency sources and drawn from a period
beginning in 1975, or when first available after 1975, and ending in
2010. This selection of 35 years corresponds to a period after the disso-
lution of the remaining European overseas empires (British, French,
Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese) and begins after the year that Freedom
House first made its annual assessment of civil liberties and political rights
(1972). This end date (2010) provides several decades of data, yet it leaves
a period—2011 to the present—for out-of-sample model testing.
3.3 Outcome Variables

• The future five-year risk of revolutionary conflict. Dichotomous: 1 =
one or more years during which a revolutionary conflict is noted in
the next five years; 0 = no revolutionary conflicts during the next five
years. Data source: UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Data Set, Version
18.1.
• The future five-year risk of separatist conflict. Dichotomous: 1 =
at least one separatist conflict in the next five years; 0 = no sepa-
ratist conflicts during the next five years. Data source: UCDP/PRIO
Armed Conflict Data Set, Version 18.1.
3.4 Independent Variables

• Median age. Continuous domain variable: indicator is the age of the
median of the country-level population, measured in years. Source:
UNPD (2017).4,5
• Small population states. Dichotomous control variable: 1 = a state
with a population less than 5.0 million and petroleum and/or
mineral revenues comprising less than 15.0% of GDP (i.e. not a
resource-reliant state); 0 = a state with a population equal to or
greater than 5.0 million, or any state that qualifies as resource reliant.
Source: UNPD (2017).
• Resource-reliant states. Dichotomous control variable: 1 = a state
with petroleum and/or mineral revenues that are equal to or greater
than 15.0% of GDP; 0 = a state with petroleum and/or mineral
revenues less than 15.0% of GDP. Source: World Development
Indicators Data Base, World Bank Group (2017).
• Conflict absence. Dichotomous experimental variable: 1 = cases in
which there have been zero (0) conflict years of the same type
of conflict (revolutionary or separatist) during the prior four-year
period (revolutionary conflicts in this category are noted on graphs
as RAbs ; separatist conflict, SAbs ); 0 = all other conflict histories.
Source: UCDP/PRIO (2018).
• Conflict intermittence. Dichotomous experimental variable: 1 =
cases in which there have been 1 or 2 conflict years during the
prior four-year period (graphed as RImt , SImt ); 0 = all other conflict
histories. Source: UCDP/PRIO (2018).
• Conflict persistence. Dichotomous experimental variable: 1 = cases
in which there have been 3 or 4 conflict years during the prior four-
year period (graphed as RPer , SPer ); 0 = all other conflict histories.
Source: UCDP/PRIO (2018).
4 Note: For the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states (Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), median age is
computed from estimates and projections of citizen residents (excluding temporary labour
migrants), which were originally provided by the US Census Bureau’s International
Program Center. These data are not publicly available via the centre’s International Data
Base (USCB-IPC, 2015).
5 The median age projections for the GCC states’ citizen-resident populations be
obtained from the author via email or downloaded from his website (www.politicaldem
ography.org).
3.5 Age-Structural Models Versus Extended Models

In the fixed effects analysis, the age-structural form (where median age
is the only continuous independent variable) was expanded to include
other continuous and dichotomous independent variables that repre-
sent competing hypotheses. In this research, four competing variables—
per capita income, educational attainment, anocracy and ethnolinguistic
heterogeneity (each discussed below)—were added to the age-structural
model to generate a set of expanded models.
3.6 Alternative Independent Variables

• Per capita income. Continuous variable: Log10 transform of GDP
per capita, in 2010 US$. Source: World Bank’s World Development
indicators, World Bank (2017).
• Late-secondary attainment, 20–29 years of age. Continuous variable:
the proportion of the population from ages 20–29 years, male and
female combined, who have attained late-secondary school levels or
higher. Source: Wittgenstein Center, Lutz et al. (2011).
• Anocracy. Dichotomous variable: Partly Free Status in Freedom
House’s annual survey of political rights and civil liberties. Source:
Freedom House (2018).
• Ethnolinguistic heterogeneity. Continuous variable: Index of ethno-
linguistic fractionalization, ELF(1), indicating heterogeneity in
terms of major world linguistic groups. Source: Desmet et al.
(2011).
4 Results
Notably, median age was determined to be highly significant in all fixed
effects models of revolutionary conflict (RAbs , RImt , RPer ) and separatist
conflict (SAbs , SImt , SPer ), as were each of the dichotomous conflict history
variables (absence, intermittence and persistence) in each model (Tables 1
and 2). Other general findings include:
• In pooled models, states with small populations (less than 5.0

million) yielded significant coefficients indicating a reduced risk of
intrastate conflict when compared to more populous states.
• In pooled models, both resource-reliant states (oil + mineral rents

>15% of GDP) and ethnolinguistically fractionated states, as a group,
were statistically different from other states for both revolutionary
conflict (RAbs , RImt , RPer ) and separatist conflict (SAbs , SImt , SPer ),
suggesting an elevated five-year risk of intrastate conflict across the
age-structural transition.
• In the fixed effects conditional logit models of revolutionary conflict
(see Table 1), GDP per capita and late secondary educational attain-
ment were found to be statistically significant. Their net effect was
to drive down the five-year risk of revolutionary conflict. Elevated
levels of GDP per capita apparently tended to slightly increase the
five-year risk of revolutionary conflict across the age-structural tran-
sition, while elevated levels of late secondary attainment tended to
decrease that risk. Anocracy, which political analysts often assume to
be a conflict-risk factor, had no apparent statistical effect.
• In the fixed effects conditional logit models of separatist conflict (see
Table 2), GDP per capita was found to be statistically significant. Its
net effect was to drive down vulnerability to revolutionary conflict.
Apparently, elevated levels of income tended to increase the five-year
risk of conflict across the age-structural transition. However, among
fixed effects models, neither late secondary attainment nor anocracy
were significant.
4.1 Age-Structural Models: Revolutionary Conflict Hypotheses

H 1: As median age increases, the risk of experiencing an onset
of revolutionary conflict declines among states that have not
recently experienced revolutionary conflict.
Failed to reject H1 .
Rationale. In the revolutionary conflict absence model (Table 1, RAbs ),
the coefficient for median age is negative and highly significant, indicating
a decline in risk as states advance through the age-structural transition.
Moreover, the model’s functional form (and ±0.95 confidence intervals),
graphed in the age-structural domain (Fig. 2), indicates that the proba-
bility of revolutionary conflict in the next five years, while relatively low
(roughly one-fifth of risk associated with states with recent conflict) is
Fig. 2 The functional forms and 0.95 confidence intervals for three mutually
exclusive categories of 4-year conflict history: RAbs (0 conflict years over the
past 4 most recent years), RImt (1 or 2 conflict years) and RPer (3 or 4 conflict
years). Youthful (YTH), intermediate (INT) and mature (MAT) phases of the
age-structural transition are shown above the graph. Data are from non-territorial
conflicts, 1972–2010 (UCDP/PRIO, 2018)
highest among states that chronically experience the most youthful age
structures (m < 20.0 years).
H 2: The risk of revolutionary conflict will be greater among states

that have recently experienced a revolutionary conflict.
H 3: Despite a recent history of persistent revolutionary conflict, the

five-year risk of revolutionary conflict will decline as median age
increases.
Rationale. The coefficients and functional forms of the series of revo-
lutionary conflict history models indicate that both conflict intermittence
(RImt ) and conflict persistence histories (RPer ) carry very high risks of
future revolutionary conflict (at m = 15 years, p > 0.85 and p > 0.95,
respectively). Nonetheless, these models’ functional forms (Fig. 2) display
a tendency for risks to decline as states advance through the intermediate
phase of the age-structural transition (Fig. 2).
4.2 Age-Structural Models: Separatist Conflict Hypotheses

H 4: As median age increases, the five-year risk of experiencing an
onset of separatist conflict will decline among states that have
not recently experienced separatist conflict.
The results of tests of H4 were ambiguous. Both the pooled and fixed-
effects models indicate that an onset of separatist conflict is statistically
more likely to occur at the youthful phase than at the mature phase of
the age-structural transition. However, median age is a poor competitor
in extended models and, in non-statistical tests using the four-phase age-
structural system, it is an inconsistent predictor.
Rationale. Whereas the coefficient values in the separatist conflict
absence (Sabs ) model (Table A.3.2, SAbs ) are negative and statistically
significant, its coefficient is small and its functional form (Fig. 3, SAbs ) is
nearly flat—i.e. the risk of an onset of separatist conflict is spread almost
evenly across the age-structural domain (Fig. 3). The small margin—for
states at a median age of 15.0 years, a five-year risk of only one in fifteen
(p < 0.07)—offers very little information to foreign affairs analysts or
policymakers who might seek guidance from this theory.
In the extended onset model, each of the hypothetical alternatives is
statistically significant (Table A.3.2, S-Onset-X). Moreover, this competi-
tion reverses the sign of the coefficient of median age and vastly reduces
its contribution to the model (p = 0.16).
H 5: The five-year risk of separatist conflict will be greater among

states that have recently experienced separatist conflict.
Fig. 3 The functional forms and 0.95 confidence intervals for three mutually
exclusive categories of 4-year conflict history: SAbs (0 conflict years over the
past 4 most recent years), SImt (1 or 2 conflict years) and SPer (3 or 4 conflict
years). Youthful (YTH), intermediate (INT) and mature (MAT) phases of the
age-structural transition are shown above the graph. Data are from territorial
conflicts, 1972–2010 (UCDP/PRIO, 2018)
H 6: Despite a recent history of persistent separatist conflict, the

five-year risk of separatist conflict will decline as median age
increases.
Similar to tests of H4 , tests of H6 produce ambiguous results. Both

the pooled and fixed-effects models indicate that an onset of separatist
conflict is statistically more likely to occur at the youthful phase than at
the mature phase of the age-structural transition. However, median age is
a poor competitor in extended models and, in non-statistical tests using
the four-phase age-structural system, it is an inconsistent predictor.
Rationale. For separatist conflicts, re-emergence and persistence are
the most powerful drivers of future risks of separatist conflict. Unlike
the functional form representing persistent revolutionary conflict, age-
structural maturation appears to have very modest effects on states with
persistent separatist conflict (Fig. 3, SPer ). Thus, the risk of persistence
of an ongoing separatist conflict remains high, even as the state-level

age structure traverses the intermediate phase and enters the mature
transitional phase. Nonetheless, there is some suggestion (SImt ) that, as
age structure matures, future risks of re-emergence could slowly dissipate
among some weakened separatist conflicts.
4.3 Models with Fixed Effects

Tables 1 and 2 present the results from panel models including country-
and year-fixed effects. Model 1 is a pooled logistic model replicating
the results from the previous between-country regressions. From Model
2 on, fixed effects are included and the interpretation changes to a
within-country comparison. Time-constant variables such as ethnolin-
guistic heterogeneity or the oil dummy are dropped from these models
since only time-varying variables can affect the outcome within a specific
country. Model 2 shows a model with only median age and fixed effects
as a benchmark and the subsequent models add controls and rivalling
explanatory variables, mirroring the previous setup.
The intriguing finding here is that median age is a robust and statis-
tically significant predictor of lower risks of both revolutionary conflict
(Table 1) as well as separatist conflict (Table 2). This means that as coun-
tries become more mature in their age structure, their risks of violent
internal conflict usually decline. This finding holds when we control for
past conflict, per capita income, educational attainment and regime type.
Among the latter variables increases in late-secondary education lower
the risks of revolutionary conflict, while the effects on separatist conflict
are weaker and not statistically significant. Per capita income has positive
effects on both outcome variables which is a marked difference to the
pooled model. This means that increases in economic development are
usually followed by an increased, rather than decreased, risk of violent
conflict if other factors such as age structure and education are held
constant.
Note that the interpretation of the within-country (fixed effects)
models is slightly different from the between-country (pooled) models.
Both models have their strengths in different domains. With the fixed-
effects model, a stronger causal claim can be made for the effect of
the independent variable of interest. The absolute values of median age
are no longer important; rather, the change within a specific country
over time is what affects the change in the risk of violent conflict. We
observe that as countries progress through the demographic transition

and median age increases, the risks of both separatist and revolutionary
conflict usually decrease for the very same countries. By contrast, the
pooled logistic model can more easily be used for pragmatic out-of-
sample predictions which are less straightforward with the conditional
logit model. These predictions can tell analysts what will likely happen
if countries enter new, previously unseen stages within the demographic
transition from the lessons we have learned from other countries (i.e.
a between-country comparison). There is some uncertainty with regard
to unobserved heterogeneity, i.e. countries that are projected to have a
mature age structure by 2050 might differ from countries that currently
have a high median age with regard to factors that are not in the model
which might influence the risk of future conflict. But from what we know
about the mechanisms today, these predictions are the “best guess” for
the future.
5 Looking Back: A Discrete Test of the Models

In this section, the basic expectations of the revolutionary and sepa-
ratist age-structural models are summarized and then compared to age-
structural trends in conflict observed across seven five-year periods, from
1976–1980 to 2011–2015 (the 2011–2015 period provides an out-of-
sample test). The observed conflict trends are produced by disaggregating
states into the NIC’s (2017) discrete age-structural categories (Fig. 4)—
youthful (Y), intermediate (I) and mature (M)—based on their median
age (because only a few states have recently entered the post-mature cate-
gory, mature and post-mature are aggregated). Because of the consistent
statistical significance of small population size (states with less than 5.0
million population), a category was created for small youthful states (Y*).
5.1 Revolutionary Conflict

Based upon the conflict history models of revolutionary conflict (RAbs ,
RImt , RPer ), analysts should expect:
• youthful states to be the most vulnerable to the onset of revolu-

tionary conflict, as well as to its persistence—substantially more likely
than states in the intermediate or mature age-structural categories.
Fig. 4 The proportion of states engaged in (a) revolutionary conflict and

(b) separatist conflict in each of four age-structural categories. Conflicts are
grouped in five-year periods from 1976–1980 to 2011–2015. Categories are
based on median age: youthful (m ≤ 25.5 years); intermediate (25.6 ≤ m ≤
35.5 years); and mature (35.6 ≤ m ≤ 45.5 years). Whereas states with youthful
populations under 5 million residents experienced intrastate conflicts (second
category), conflicts among similarly small states with intermediate and mature
populations have been extremely rare. Data are drawn from the UCDP/PRIO
Armed Conflict Data Set (UCDP/PRIO, 2018) and UN Population Division
estimates (UNPD, 2017)
Table 3 Parameter values for revolutionary conflict forecasts (in Table 4, Fig. 5)
Forecasts a1 a2 a3 a4
Middle 0.359 0.129 0.107 0.044

Upper (+1.0 std. dev.) 0.412 0.167 0.166 0.057
Lower (−1.0 std. dev.) 0.306 0.092 0.048 0.030
• youthful states with small populations (less than 5.0 million) to be

less likely to experience revolutionary conflict than youthful states
with larger populations.
• states with a mature population only rarely experience a revolu-
tionary conflict, which would be unlikely to persist.
The observed age-structural pattern of revolutionary conflict (Fig. 4a)

is generally consistent with the expectations generated by the conflict
history models (RAbs , RImt , RPer ). Close inspection of the data indicates
that the peak in the five-year count of states in revolutionary conflict
in the 1991–1995 period was preceded by a decade of relatively large
numbers of youthful states (15–18) engaged in persistent revolutionary
conflict (i.e. conflict in three or four of the past four years).
This early 1990s peak was the product of coinciding peaks in persis-
tent revolutionary conflict in southern and eastern Africa, as well as in
Latin America, plus relatively large numbers onsets and intermittent revo-
lutionary conflicts (5–8). By the 1996–2000 period, the prevalence of
revolutionary conflicts in Latin America had dropped precipitously.
5.2 Separatist Conflict

Based on functional outcomes of the conflict history models of separatist
conflict (Fig. 3, SAbs , SImt , SPer ), analysts should expect:
• a weak age-structural pattern disrupted by patterns driven by conflict

persistence and re-emergence.
• states with small populations (less than 5.0 million) to be less likely
to experience separatist conflict than states with larger populations.
• modest declines among mature states that have experienced persis-
tent separatist conflict.
The observed age-structural pattern of separatist conflict (Fig. 4b) was

generally consistent with expectations derived from the separatist models
(SAbs , SImt , SPer ). Whereas a defined age-structural pattern among sepa-
ratist conflicts held up through much of the Cold War, the pattern broke
down in the 1996–2000 period and is no longer apparent. Without strong
age-structural patterns in the onset and persistence of separatist conflict,
and the propensity of this type of conflict to re-emerge regardless of
age structure, forecasting separatist conflicts using age-structural methods
seems inappropriate.
Until the 2011–2015 period, the five-year count of countries in revolu-
tionary conflict was consistently about 50% higher than separatist conflict
(there are states in which both types have occurred in a year). The
most recent data (UCDP/PRIO, 2018) indicate that the number of
countries in separatist conflict is nearly equal to the number with revo-
lutionary conflict—a reversal generated by onset in some youthful states,
and the persistence and re-emergence of separatist conflicts in states in
the intermediate phase of the age-structural transition.
6 Looking Forward: A Forecast

of Trends in Revolutionary Conflict
Whereas the previously present conflict history models of revolutionary
conflict (RAbs , RImt , RPer ) provide numerous insights, their dependence
on recent conflict histories—details that they are unable to generate (as
in a simulation) and then use to calculate future risks—makes these
models unsuitable for forecasting. In the following section, forecasts of
RT , the global five-year count of states experiencing at least one year
of revolutionary conflict during that period, are generated using a linear
model:
RT = a1 Y + a2 Y∗ + a3 I + a4 (M + P);
where Y, I, M and P represent counts of states, all with populations

greater than 5.0 million, in the youthful, intermediate, mature and
post-mature age-structural phases, respectively.6 Y* is the count of least
populous states in the youthful phase, each with a population under 5.0
million. There is no corresponding term in this relationship for the least
6 See Methods for definitions of categories, based on median age.

populous states in more mature phases (since 1972, no state in a more

mature phase, with a population under 5.0 million, has experienced a
revolutionary conflict).
In this model, each categorical count is multiplied by an estimate
(a k ) of the proportion of states in revolutionary conflict, a, in each age-
structural category, k, over a five-year period. In the middle forecast, a k,
is the categorical mean of 5 five-year post-Cold War periods, from 1991–
1995 to 2011–2015. The categorical mean plus one standard deviation is
used to generate the forecast’s upper bound; the categorical mean minus
one standard deviation marks its lower bound (Table 3).
The forecast of revolutionary conflict begins in the ongoing five-year
period, 2016–2020, and ends in 2036–2040. In the latter period, it
suggests a global count between 13 and 22 revolutionary conflicts, down
from 28 in the 2011–2015 period. This slow downward trending fore-
cast (Fig. 5)—a speculative departure from the slightly upward trend
in revolutionary conflict since 2010—appears superficially similar to the
forecast made from a detailed model of all intrastate conflicts by Hegre
et al. (2013). However, these two forecasts are not comparable. Because
we find that separatist conflicts are largely unresponsive to changes
in country-level median age, separatist (territorial) conflicts have been
omitted from our forecast.
Despite its simplicity, this model is quite robust. When applied to the
in-sample period from 1976 to 2010, the model does well at tracking the
conflict trendline. Its upper and lower estimates completely envelope all
recorded 5-year estimates of the number of states in conflict, even rising
and falling with the peak in revolutionary conflicts, which was recorded in
the early 1990s (see observed peak in Table 4, Fig. 5)—a feat that other
models have been unable to perform.
This model provides reasonable regional expectations (Table 4).
However, the observed five-year count of states in revolutionary conflicts
has generally exceeded the model’s expected count in the three most
youthful regions: (1) West and Central Africa; (2) East and Southern
Africa; and (3) the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia Region.
Observed counts have generally been slightly lower than expected in the
three remaining regions: (1) Europe; (2) North and South America; and
(3) the East Asia, India and Pacific Region.
How is the forecast holding up? The most recent UCDP/PRIO
(2018) data show that 25 states have already experienced a revolutionary
conflict during the 2016–2017 period, which is within the forecast’s lower
Table 4 Five-year expected and observed regional counts of states in

revolutionary conflict
1991–1995 2011–2015 2031–2035 (forecast)

Regions Expected Observed Expected Observed Lower Middle Upper
East Asia, 5 4 3 2 1 2 3
India, Pacific
Europe 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
Middle East, 7 11 6 9 2 3 4
N. Africa,
Central Asia
North & 6 7 4 2 1 2 3
South
America
South & 6 9 6 7 5 6 7
East Africa
West & 5 4 6 7 6 7 8
Central
Africa
(18) and upper (30) bounds for the 2016–2020 period. The same data
set records 24 states engaged in separatist conflict during the 2016–2017
period.
7 Conclusions
The leading story of this chapter concerns the limited duration of revolu-
tionary conflicts; but not their duration in years of chronological time, as
political scientists would naturally assume. Instead, revolutionary conflicts
do not persist across the age-structural transition. Analysts should expect
revolutions to be settled, fade, or of short duration after states enter the
intermediate phase of this transition. Advances in country-level median
age—particularly beyond the median age of 30 years—tend to dampen
the statistical risk of a revolution.
Our conclusions concerning separatist conflict are more tenuous. Sepa-
ratist conflicts appear somewhat more likely to occur in the more youthful
phase of the age-structural transition—however, an onset is relatively
rare. However, once a separatist conflict has begun, it can persist or re-
appear intermittently, even as the country-level median age advances into
the intermediate and mature phases of the age-structural transition. For
example, ethnic conflicts in Myanmar (intermediate phase), the Ukraine

(mature phase) and Azerbaijan (mature phase) have erupted periodically,
despite the age-structural maturity of these states.
Notably, separatist conflicts in the youthful phase dominated those in
more mature phases of the age-structural transition until the late 1990s.
Since then, separatist conflicts have been just as prevalent or more preva-
lent among states in the intermediate phase of the transition, as they have
in the youthful phase (Fig. 4b). Whereas the ratio of countries expe-
riencing revolutionary conflict to those experiencing separatist conflicts
remained around 2–1 since the early 1980s, that ratio has been close to
1 since 2015 (UCDP/PRIO, 2018).
When disaggregated by conflict type and conflict history, a stronger,
sturdier model of the relationship emerges between states with youthful
populations and the onset and persistence of revolutionary conflict.
Several means of testing—i.e. using statistically generated age-structural
functions (Fig. 2), empirical patterns generated by discretely categorized
conflict data (Fig. 4a), and testing against hypothetical alternatives in
an extended model (see Table A.3.1)—provide evidence that the five-
year risk of an onset of revolutionary conflict remains elevated in the
youthful phase of the age-structural transition (i.e. states with a youth
bulge). And, this evidence indicates that this measure of risk to the onset
of revolutionary conflict declines as these states approach, and traverse,
the intermediate phase of the age-structural transition—a window on the
age-structural domain that is associated with the growth of institutional
capacity and political development (Cincotta & Madsen, 2017; Cincotta,
2017).
More importantly, the study provides evidence that persistent and
intermittent revolutionary conflicts are likely to fade if and when states
head deeply into the intermediate phase of the age-structural transition—
much in the way that Colombia’s long-running Marxist insurgencies
appear to be nearing a close. Moreover, where revolutionary conflicts
have arisen in intermediate and mature states, they have typically been
relatively brief (in chronological time). Examples are the recent revolt of
a military faction in Turkey (in 2016), and insurrections in Russia (1993),
Romania (1989) and Georgia (1991–1993) following the breakup of the
Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact.
The exceptions to this general rule have been non-territorial, mostly
civilian-targeted efforts in industrial countries, some of which have been
generated by overseas organizations using foreign travellers or immi-

grants—a difficult to classify melding of international actors and resident
discontents. Others have been generated by self-motivated individuals,
often influenced by social media.
7.1 Discussion: The Persistence of Separatist Conflict

The lack of a strong relationship between separatist conflict and the
country-level age structure reflects ethnic conflicts’ apparent ability to
persist and re-emerge through much of the age-structural transition. This
should not surprise analysts. Unlike revolutionary conflict, which has been
geographically widespread among youthful states, the vast majority of
separatist conflicts currently arise and re-emerge in states whose borders
enclose a multi-ethnic mix reflecting the territorial conquests of empires
that endured into the twentieth century. These extinct empires include
the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires (dismantled in 1918); the
British, French, German, Netherlands, Belgian and Portuguese Overseas
Empires (nearly fully dismantled by the early 1970s), and the Russian
Empire (ultimately dismantled at the dissolution of the Soviet Union at
the close of 1991). Conversely, the states that once made up Spain’s New
World empire, most of which had gained independence in the early nine-
teenth century, have suffered much less from separatist conflict over the
past 70 years. According to UCDP/PRIO (2018), separatist conflicts
have been absent from the Americas since 1950, when Puerto Rican
separatists engaged the US government in armed conflict.
What explains the divergence in separatist and revolutionary conflict
dynamics? According to Yair and Miodownik (2016), the sources of
grievances matter most. While advances in age-structural maturity and the
dissipation of the youth bulge tend to relieve much of the employment-
related grievances and inequities felt by young adults, separatists’ core
grievances, centred around their identity and the lack of political
autonomy granted to their identity group, are often unresolved.
In addition, Cincotta (2011) has argued that minority youth bulges
can facilitate separatist political movements. Economically and socially
marginalized ethnic minorities, particularly in rural enclaves, often retain
high levels of fertility while fertility among the more urbanized and
better educated majority declines (e.g. Lebanese Shiites, rural Kurds in
south-eastern Turkey, Pattani Muslims in Thailand and some Caucasian
minorities in Russia). Under these conditions, the country-level median
age advances, majority-minority economic and social conditions diverge,

and the marginalized minority grows more rapidly than the majority—a
situation that tends to fuel fears among the politically endowed majority
particularly when articulated by political entrepreneurs (Blomquist, 2016;
Blomquist & Cincotta, 2016; Cincotta et al., 2003; Leuprecht, 2010).
Does separatist warfare preclude the settlement of conflict? Of course,
that is not the case, theoretically or empirically. The age-structural func-
tion for intermittent separatist conflicts (Fig. 3, SImt ) suggests a very slow
and uncertain decline (shown by wide confidence intervals) in the five-
year risk of conflict. This function’s slow decline across the age-structural
transition alludes to the protracted warfare and costly interventions that
ultimately led to the successful mediation, violent termination or slow
ideological disintegration of separatist movements in Spain (Basques), the
UK (Irish Catholics), Indonesia (Timorese, Aceh), India (Nagas, Punjabi
Sikhs) and Ethiopia (Eritreans).
7.2 Outlook: Intrastate Conflict’s Future

What can demographic projections tell defence and intelligence analysts
about the future of armed conflict? Assuming that the UN Population
Division’s medium fertility variant provides a reasonable projection of
the pace of regional demographic change, over the next two decades (to
2040), foreign affairs analysts should expect:
• a slow downward trend in the global number of states engaged in

a revolutionary conflict (Fig. 5) with notable regional declines in
Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and Southeast Asia, the
Maghreb, Central Asia and southern Africa (Table 4); and
• sustained, and possibly increasing, counts of states in revolutionary
conflict in the remaining contiguous clusters of youthful states, situ-
ated in: the Greater Sahel, tropical Africa (West, Central, East); the
Horn of Africa-Yemen; Pakistan-Afghanistan; the Mashreq-Levant
(Syria, Iraq, Jordan); and possibly in parts of the South Pacific
Region (Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Solomon Islands).
With the exception of the South Pacific group, there are currently
few indications that these youthful clusters are maturing. Whereas the
UNPD’s current medium fertility variant projects that about 30% of
Fig. 5 The trend in the number of states engaged in revolutionary conflict

(but not intrastate separatist conflict) over seven five-year periods (1976–1980
to 2011–2015). Forecasts are for 2016–2020 to 2036–2040. Five-year counts of
states in revolutionary conflict (observed) are drawn from non-territorial conflicts
in the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Data Set (2018)
today’s 69 youthful states are likely to exit the youthful category by 2035,
only a handful of these are located within the most war-torn youthful
clusters.
Given this outlook, the world’s developed states would do well to
increase support for peace operations, as well as for regional efforts
to contain the spread of spill-over conflicts in and around the most
youthful regions: the Sahel, tropical Africa, the Middle East and the Horn
of Africa-Yemen. As a long-term strategy, development donors should
increase their support for the suite of programs and policies that, in
youthful countries, have promoted the transition to a more mature age
structure—including those that lengthen girls’ educational attainment,
provide access to modern contraception and information, and secure
equal rights for women.
In the long-run, separatist conflicts could present the most persis-
tent threat to regional stability. To lower the risks of separatist conflicts,
there is a need to encourage greater participation of now-marginalized
ethnic and religious minorities, and to support those political leaders who
show the motivation and political will to implement integrationist poli-

cies. Where these measures fail, it may be useful to consider in extreme
cases (e.g. the Sahel, Somalia, Yemen, the Mashreq, Afghanistan) the
formation of new nation states with more realistic borders, replacing
multi-ethnic colonial-era entities and post-colonial conglomerates that
have become sites for recurring ethnoreligious conflict (for a critique
of partition theory, see Sambanis, 2000). To reduce the risk of post-
independence revolutionary conflict (e.g., South Sudan, Timor-Leste),
age-structural theory would suggest that populations in those fledgling
states should be within, or beyond, the intermediate phase of the age-
structural transition (beyond median age of 26 years)—conditions that,
unfortunately, have rarely been achieved by states at independence.
7.3 Future Research

For researchers who are intent on further clarifying demography’s rela-
tionship with revolution, this chapter’s conclusions open several avenues
for research. Among these opportunities, studies that focus on the cessa-
tion of revolutionary conflict are (in the authors’ opinion) likely to yield
the most return. Because the models presented in this chapter indi-
cate that foreign affairs analysts should expect the risk of revolutionary
conflict to decline to low levels during the transition’s intermediate phase
(26–35 years), one should ask:
• What qualities best characterize those revolutionary conflicts that

come to a sustained conclusion early in the age-structural transition?
• And, what qualities characterize revolts that start and end much later
in this transition - within and beyond the demographic window?
While academic researchers have argued that anocracies (partial democ-

racies) are more vulnerable to intrastate conflict than democracies or
autocracies (Regan & Bell, 2010), among intelligence analysts the
hypothesis has a reputation as a poor predictor of future conflict. That
said, investigations of revolutions among more specific regime types—e.g.
single-party autocracies, military regimes and multi-party authoritarians—
when observed across the age-structural domain might provide clues to
the timing of the onset and/or cessation of revolutionary conflict.
Predicting the course of ethnic separatist conflict is another matter. As

Yair and Miodownik’s (2016) research first suggested, legitimate clues to
a future onset or cessation of separatist conflict are more likely to exist at
the sub-national level (ethnic group or provincial level) than in country-
level data sets. While there are suggestions that majority-minority gaps in
fertility and age structure may reflect acute inter-ethnic tensions that are
difficult to resolve, the fact that many central government agencies do not
collect ethnicity-coded data, or do not release those data to the public,
limits research on this topic to case studies.
Here, again, the researchers’ dilemma is in full force: the more one
learns, the more one comprehends how little one really understands.
Whereas Herbert Möller’s most basic observations on the relationship
between demography and conflict—published more than 50 years ago—
still hold up today, the dynamics that underlie those observations turn
out to be less simple than political demographers (including ourselves)
believed them to be.
Acknowledgements We are grateful for the statistical advice of our principal

editor, Achim Goerres, and the editorial comments and suggestions of an
anonymous reviewer.
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holder.
CHAPTER 4
Poverty and Religious Affiliation Worldwide,

1970–2010
Vegard Skirbekk and Jose Navarro
1 Introduction: Poor Man’s Religion?

There is a significant risk that social and political conflicts arising from
the changing religious composition of states could increase over time,
especially when overlapping with high inter-community levels of social
inequality. This is particularly important in an era of high migration and
significant fertility gaps, which results in differences in age structures and
different population growth. In this chapter, we focus on social inequality,
poverty, and one central dimension of cultural identity, religion. We

V. Skirbekk (B) · J. Navarro

Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: vs2551@cumc.columbia.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_4
94 V. SKIRBEKK AND J. NAVARRO
therefore study social inequality in a different context than the geographic

entities often considered—such as countries or subnational areas. Under-
standing the interlinkages between religion and poverty is relevant to
several domains, including to assess how (a) poverty levels across religions
coincide with religious tensions, conflicts and societal divisions around the
world, (b) policies, which may be most effective at poverty alleviation,
could depend on the religious composition of the economically deprived,
(c) poverty can both draw some to religion when financial, social or moral
support and a sense of belonging could be found, however, how it could
also alienate others from religious beliefs, and (d) behaviours that can be
grounded in religious convictions may alleviate or perpetuate or even raise
poverty.
To describe and understand the relationships between economic depri-
vation and religious belief, one needs to assess faith and economic
deprivation in tandem. Until now, there has not been any worldwide
assessment on the relationship between religion and poverty. This chapter
seeks to do so by combining unique global data on religious affiliation and
economic inequality—and by assessing trends over time. We present new
data and estimates on poverty grouped by religious belief worldwide, and
we combine religious and income distribution data to produce a distri-
bution of poverty by religion and country. Our sample comprises 152
countries and encompasses 95% of world population. Apart from small
(less than 500,000 inhabitants) states, we provide estimates for all major
countries. See Table A.4.1 in the online appendix for a list of countries
that we include.
Demography can directly or indirectly affect political processes, partic-
ularly when different groups have opposing social and economic interests:
it can serve as a catalyst or a conditioning factor for political decisions.
Population change needs to be considered as a political force in its
own right. The unprecedented global demographic turbulence created
by the accelerated rise in world population of the last 200 years is likely
to crest around the middle of this century. The next few decades will
present substantial changes in long-term demographic trends, including
the shrinkage of Europe’s labour force, the extreme ageing of advanced
industrial societies, as well as the advanced ageing of China, a global shift
from rural to urban habitation and a substantial turn in global economic
growth towards the developing world, where 9 out of every 10 of the
world’s children now live, 22% of those in India alone (UN, 2019).
4 POVERTY AND RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION WORLDWIDE, 1970–2010 95
Inequality can be a powerful driver of political action. In contexts

where economic inequality levels are high (and perceived as unfair), those
at the bottom levels of the income distribution who are (or feel) disad-
vantaged may try to alter the system, while others who benefit from
the current system may try to maintain the status-quo. If large enough,
groups are constrained with few economic opportunities, low levels of
wealth and lack of social mobility, it can act as a mobilizing force for
political action that could lead to political instability and possibly societal
change and reordering. In an era with public data on income distribu-
tions across the world and social media and television, it is increasingly
clear that people compare their own wealth and well-being to others not
only within their own regional community and country, but also within
and across comparison groups with others, including people of the same
or different religious denomination.
A key marker of group identity is one’s religious affiliation (Castells
2003; Goujon et al., 2006). Religion and religious denominations have
been suggested to be key markers of conflict lines in terms of, for
instance, attitudes towards same-sex marriage or attitudes towards abor-
tion (Halman & van Ingen, 2015; Norris & Inglehart, 2011; van den
Akker et al., 2013). Religion and the degree of religiosity are often also
strong markers of political behaviour, influencing whether one votes,
which political allegiances one has and which parties one chooses to vote
for (Gayte et al., 2017; Gerber et al., 2016).
Population increases are fastest among those who are more religious
and at the lower end of the income distribution globally. Demographic
growth in the world is mainly taking place among those with less educa-
tion and lower income, while those with higher education and greater
income tend to have close to replacement fertility (Madsen et al., 2018;
Skirbekk, 2008; Vogl, 2015). Demographic growth is mainly taking place
among certain religious groups such as Muslims and Hindus, while it
is negative among those with no religious affiliation (Stonawski et al.,
2015). The relations between demography and politics are complex:
demography can drive political and religious behaviours (e.g. high fertility
can lead to more conservative views), and population groups can drive
political processes (greater degree of religious populations can vote more
conservative parties). One of the drivers of demographic behaviour is reli-
gion, a cultural institution pervasive globally and with a very high impact
on political processes across societies.
Poverty does not take place in a vacuum, but rather within a set of
defined group identities, which help delineate identity within a subset
of individuals across a variety of domains (Banks, 2008; Huddy, 2015;
Sachdeva, 2016). Such group identities could lead to motivation for
collective action, help motivate and coordinate political action that could
help to reduce poverty. Group memberships could, however, also lead
to apathy and disenchantment, create a victim-based explanation for why
development has led to one being poor and lead to fatalistic views that
entail a belief that one cannot escape poverty and thereby demotivate
actions that could have helped one escape poverty (Akerlof & Kranton,
2000; Jenkins, 2014; Lewis, 2017). The combination of high levels
of social inequality and rapid demographic change along religious lines
can have important ramifications. Global demographic religious change
implies that more individuals will have a religion in the near future, and
that these individuals will be increasingly likely to be situated in regions
with high levels of economic deprivation (Stonawski et al., 2015).
2 Religion and Poverty

As Figure A.4.1 (online appendix) indicates, religion is powerfully
intertwined along a number of causal pathways with the production
of economic, environmental and social outcomes in societies. Poverty
and riches, like other social outcomes, are not likely to be randomly
distributed across religious groups. Modern organized monotheistic reli-
gions such as Christianity and Islam have at their core a very strong
redistributive message and foster behaviours conducive to reciprocity and
equality between its members. Indeed, the world’s four major religions—
Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—all include doctrines of
salvation and damnation that provide sets of different incentives for
performing economic activities and charitable deeds. Comparative anal-
ysis of the four religions has shown that each promotes accumulation
of wealth and hard work, while discouraging idleness, debt and poverty.
The primary difference across these religions is with respect to charity.
Religions that allow believers to contribute to their own salvation tend
to emphasize varieties of selective charity. Religions that hold salvation is
only possible through divine selection stress universal charity (McCleary
& Barro, 2006).
Religions and religious institutions and movements both have played
major roles in supporting established social order, but also in advocating
change, rebellion and revolutionary movements, from Ancient Rome to

the English Civil War, the Islamic revolution in Iran and many more
(Lincoln, 1981). Finding effective policies to deal with poverty can hinge
on the type of religious convictions and beliefs of those who are dispro-
portionally poor. For instance, religion may relate to the likelihood of
attaining higher female education and prioritizing a career ahead of alter-
native life goals, such as marrying at a young age and having a large family.
Some religious groups have a fatalistic view of life, where one’s economic
position is predetermined at birth—including the Hindu caste system,
which prescribes occupational opportunities based on caste. According to
their religion, Hindu populations may respond differently to incentives
advocating change through own actions than other religions.
Poverty has a subjective and an objective dimension. Individuals may
compare themselves to others within a specific region, but they may also
compare themselves to others with a similar group identity (Bhuiyan,
2018; Clark & Oswald, 1996). One typically compares one’s economic
standing not with a global mean, but with a reference group closer to
one’s own social context. For instance, some may consider their own rela-
tive income rank in relation to others with similar ethnic background,
from the same linguistic group or the same type of profession. One
important dimension that has received very little attention is religion and
income; the aim of the current study is to fill that gap.
Religious groups belonging can act as a strong determinant of group
belonging and may help define who one’s compatriots, competitors and
adversaries are. Religious communities, in which many are economically
deprived and which at the same time are growing demographically in
absolute and relative terms, can represent a growing political and demo-
graphic challenge. It could potentially lead to more conflict, as has been
the case in recent decades. More inequality across religious groups, where
some religious groups are at different ends of the income distribution, can
lead to greater likelihood of social upheaval, political instability, tensions
and violent conflict (Bartusevičius, 2014; Nordås, 2014).
Economic growth and educational expansions have been found to
correlate with religious and cultural groups, and inference models suggest
that these relations are of causal nature (Becker & Woessmann, 2013;
Bonsang et al., 2017; Cantoni, 2011; Iyer, 2016). Diversity may affect the
willingness to support political institutions or to pay taxes (Alesina et al.,
1999; Lee et al., 2015). Religions represent a new line of tensions in the
global order and may be a key dimension of regional and global disputes
and conflicts (Burstein, 2018; Huntington, 1993; Philpott, 2018). This

has also lead to widespread beliefs and tensions, where majorities of Euro-
peans seek bans on Muslim immigration (Goodwin et al., 2017), and the
majority of adolescents in the Norwegian capital of Oslo believe that the
West and Islam are in a state of war (Vestel & Bakken, 2016).
Despite declines in financial hardship in recent decades, high shares of
the world population still live in poverty (Inklaar & Rao, 2017; Kraay &
van der Weide, 2017). Great progress has been made in reducing poverty,
but as rates decrease, reducing poverty any further seems to be getting
harder (Crespo Cuaresma et al., 2018). If one believes that one’s fate (in
terms of, for instance, becoming wealthy or maintaining good health) is
an outcome of God’s will, then one may be less likely to rationally plan
for or adapt one’s behaviour to improve one’s conditions and prospects.
Religion could influence important human behaviours that have a direct
impact on economic outcomes such as whether one chooses to pursue
higher education, whether one seeks career-oriented positions or whether
one wants to have a family and higher or lower fertility levels (Buber-
Ennser & Skirbekk, 2016; Lehrer, 2004; McQuillan, 2004). Economic
inequalities and time trends can differ by country and religion around
the world. Although part of this variation could be ascribed to demo-
graphic and human capital differences across religions, religion may well
have a bearing on key aspects of human behaviour that influence poverty
risks as well as socio-economic outcomes among the poor. This could, for
instance, include how religion may affect education, labour force partic-
ipation and career choice by gender. Religion may also relate to health
risk behaviours including diet, exercise patterns, alcohol use, vaccina-
tions and choice of health treatment. Importantly, religious views may
exert influence on financial behaviours such as savings and investment
behaviours.
Economic inequality and religion have substantial links and a tradi-
tionally interwoven relationship. Religion has been found to relate to
poverty-relevant outcomes, including economic aspirations and family size
(Becker et al., 2016; Heaton, 2011). Religion also affects intermediaries
of poverty, including the likelihood and timing of getting married and
the age of having children as well as cohort fertility1 (Bakibinga et al.,
2016). Those who are more religious tend to have a greater number
1 Cohort fertility describes the number of children at the end of one’s reproductive
period.
of children—and to have them at earlier ages, which may conflict with

educational attainment and lower capacity to attain high earnings. Inter-
generational transmission of wealth could imply that poverty is more
likely to be concentrated in religious groups as long as the more religious
tend to have on average lower education and lower earnings. Religious
influences may affect human capital formation and occupational choice
(Abbasi-Shavazi & Torabi, 2012; Barnes & Brownell, 2016; Glaeser &
Sacerdote, 2008). Fertility timing and the resulting sibship size can also
be related to individual impoverishment and national economic growth
(Berman, 2000; Canning & Schultz, 2012; Teller, 2011).
Moreover, of particular importance for the poor and in poorer coun-
tries that lack developed welfare systems is the provision of welfare goods
through religious entities (Göçmen, 2013; Kagawa et al., 2012; Olivier
et al., 2015). Frequently, there is a lack of old-age care systems, and
universality and generosity of public systems may be inadequate. Also,
in many nations, religious organizations manage key aspects of care,
including old-age care, hospitals, childcare and free education. Access to
such services may depend on membership and participation in activities
in religious beliefs and organizations. If poverty is concentrated in certain
religious groups, this may motivate others to carry out services for these
groups.2
3 Data and Methods

The poverty assessment data are taken from the World Bank´s PovCalNet
initiative (World Bank, 2018), which tracks and measures poverty through
a variety of measures of absolute and relative poverty of income. We use
two measures of poverty to enable a global comparison from the World
Bank’s PovCalNet database:
1. Absolute poverty. It is measured as the percentage of population

living on less than 1.90 USD per capita 2011 (International USD
2 Conflicts and war are increasingly concentrated and likely to be based between reli-
gious groups (Gleditsch & Rudolfsen, 2015; Isaacs, 2016). Income inequalities are an
important determinant of conflict (Braithwaite et al., 2016; Fearon & Hoeffler, 2014;
Murshed, 2002). Jointly understanding the relationship between income and poverty
could help one build an understanding of how and where religious and poverty-driven
intergroup conflict interrelate.
at Purchase Power Parity as defined by the World Bank). Under this

level of income per person and per day, it is deemed that on a global
level the basic needs of a person cannot be fully met, irrespective of
the country he or she is living in. This would be the lowest common
denominator of poverty globally.
2. Relative Poverty. This is a measure of poverty that takes into account
the distribution of income. It is based on national poverty lines that
vary considerably across countries. It is measured as the share of the
population under a certain percentage of disposable national income
that, compared to the rest of the population of the country, counts
as poor. While basic needs may be satisfied, the level of income does
not enable an individual to live an inclusive and fulfilling life within
its society. For the OECD, the standard is to take the share of the
population earning less than 60% of median income. For countries
where the measure is not available, we have constructed the measure
by using that approach in our sample. The PovCalNet database
contains income/consumption distributional data from about 1200
household surveys spanning 1979–2015 and 138 developing coun-
tries. More than 2 million randomly sampled households were
interviewed in these surveys, making them representative for 96%
of the population of developing countries. More information and a
brief discussion on the comparability of poverty measures used in
PovCalNet in the online Appendix, A.4.1
3.1 Religious Affiliation Data

PEW-ACC religious projections were the first ever global estimates of reli-
gion that considered global religious demographic detail. It incorporated
age-sex variation and took into account more than 2500 demographic
databases.3 The 2015 PEW-ACC estimates of religious population have
opened a wide avenue for research on religious development of the world
3 This research was based on funding from Vegard Skirbekk’s grant from the European
Research Council, Grant Agreement 241003-COHORT and a Templeton funding grant
provided to the PEW foundation. All projections were carried out by a model developed
by Marcin Stonawski together with Vegard Skirbekk, as part of the ACC (Age and Cohort
Change group). Reports based on this were released as various PEW reports on religion
(Pew, 2011, 2012, 2015).
population: ACC and PEW produced the first global data set on affil-
iation by age and sex, covering 199 nations and more than 99% of
the global population. Based on a large database of more than 2,500
surveys, registers and censuses (Pew, 2015; Skirbekk et al., 2016; Ston-
awski et al., 2010, 2015), data on religious affiliation were taken from a
separate unique project that estimated global religious affiliation by age
and sex globally. Religious affiliation information from more than 2,500
data sources, including censuses, demographic surveys, general popula-
tion surveys and other studies, was analysed—the largest project of its
kind to date (Stonawski et al., 2015). These data were used to obtain
country-specific estimates on religious affiliation by 5-year age groups
separately for men and women. Census, survey, focus group and other
demographic data collection methods were used to identify belief systems
as they relate to the demographic make-up of society, age and sex distri-
bution, and geographic factors. 83% of the world had a religion in 2010
according to our estimates, and this proportion is projected to increase to
87% by 2050, with changes taking place more rapidly among the young
groups (Hackett et al., 2015; Skirbekk et al., 2016; Stonawski et al.,
2015).
We study religious affiliation data based on self-identification of reli-
gious beliefs from surveys and censuses. We do not use registries from
religious communities or proxy interviews, as these may be biased or
inflated due to overcounting, skewed due to political or economic reasons
and many may not fully register religious conversions.
4 Findings and Discussion

Extreme or absolute poverty is defined as living on less than USD 1.90 a
day, measured in 2011 Purchasing Power Parity prices. According to the
most recent estimates (World Bank, 2017), in 2013, 10.7% of the world’s
population lived at or below USD 1.90 a day. That is down from 35% in
1990 and 44% in 1981. Many countries have experienced dramatic shifts
in poverty in this time span, but the most dramatic has been the decline
in absolute poverty experienced by countries in Asia, where the combined
absolute poverty went from 81% in the 1970s to less than 13% in 2013.
In this timespan, the world population doubled from 3.8 billion to
over 7 billion people. If we look at the distribution by religions in Fig. 1a,
b, we can see the distribution of the world’s 1.4 billion poor in 1970,
and how the numbers evolve until 2010. At 968 million people, the
Fig. 1 a, b Absolute poverty by religion, 1970 and 2010 (Source Own calcula-
tions and databases on global religion and poverty [Stonawski et al., 2015; World
Bank, 2018])
number of poor broke the billion people barrier around 2010. In terms
of religion, there has been a marked increase in the number of Christians
and a stagnation of Hindus. In addition, the shifts have been dramatic
for the unaffiliated and folk religionists, driven by China’s growth that
has accounted for lifting 200 million unaffiliated and 130 million folk
religionists out of poverty.
From Fig. 2a, b, we can see the sharp drop in rates of poverty for
all religious groups globally, which is particularly marked for the unaf-
filiated and folk religionists. The unaffiliated, spread in numbers equally
between China and nine other countries with high levels of development
(Germany, France, Japan, Korea, US, Canada, Italy, Brazil), show the
lowest levels of poverty together with the Buddhists and Jews, who are
concentrated in the US and Israel.
In Figs. 3 and 4, we show the respective values for relative poverty
distributions according to national poverty lines. The orders of magnitude
and trends are comparable and similar to the absolute poverty numbers.
This points to the fact that while there has been a marked growth of
inequality in the distribution of income globally, at national levels for most
countries income inequality has been driven by a relative stagnation of the
middle sections of society, while the poor have grown at or faster than the
global average.
We find that poverty is disproportionately concentrated in the Hindu
populations (between 24 and 29.3%), mostly driven by poverty in India—
followed by Christianity (12.9 and 19.7%) and Islam (14 and 22%). Folk
religionists (12.4 and 13%) as well as other religions (14 and 18%) tend
to rank mid-ways when it comes to poverty incidence. Finally, the unaf-
filiated (8.5 and 9.7%) and Buddhists (6.8 and 10%) have low levels of
poverty, and the Jews (0.3 and 1.2%) have the lowest of all shares living
in poverty. This holds true for both relative and absolute levels of poverty.
India and China are two countries that have elevated more citizens
out of poverty in the past 30 years, and which will be crucial in bringing
down poverty further if the world wants to meet the SDGs set for 2030 to
eradicate absolute poverty. We therefore hone in on the religious charac-
teristics of the least well-off citizens in these two countries in the context
of political demography developments in the last few decades analysed in
further context in the respective chapters by Noesselt as well as Balachan-
dran/James (this volume). Table 1 highlights the respective numbers of
people living in absolute poverty in India and China in 2010.
Fig. 2 a, b Absolute poverty by religion in 1970 and 2010 (in %) (Source Own
calculations and databases on global religion and poverty [Stonawski et al., 2015;
World Bank, 2018])
Fig. 3 Relative Poverty by religion in 2010 (Source Own calculations and

databases on global religion and poverty [Stonawski et al., 2015; World Bank,
2018])
Fig. 4 Relative poverty by religion in 2010 (in %) (Source Own calculations and
databases on global religion and poverty [Stonawski et al., 2015; World Bank,
2018])
Table 1 India and China, population living in absolute poverty by religion,

2010
Religion India, population living in China, population living in

absolute poverty (in thousands) absolute poverty (in thousands)
Christians 7,863 4,447

Muslims 44,507 1,605
Unaffiliated 221 45,544
Buddhists 2,337 15,867
Hindus 245,969 1
Folk religions 1,476 19,129
Other religions 6,962 590
Source Own calculations and databases on global religion and poverty (Stonawski et al., 2015; World
Bank, 2018)
In 2010, India had the largest number of people living in absolute

poverty worldwide, with more than 300 million citizens. Since 2010,
the trend towards poverty reduction on the back of overall strong
economic growth has accelerated. According to the latest estimates
(Crespo Cuaresma et al., 2018), the ratio of India’s population living in
absolute poverty since 2010 has more than halved from 30% in 2000 over
21% in 2010 to less than 8% in 2018. By contrast, barely 1% of China’s
population had been living in absolute poverty, which according to the
latest estimates has also more than halved to less than 0.5% in 2018.
It is important to highlight that both countries had very similar levels
of absolute poverty, close to 80% of their populations, just a generation
ago (World Bank, 1990). With different but broadly similar develop-
ment plans and insertion into the global economy, these two countries
have achieved significant progress in poverty reduction with very different
political approaches and institutional constellations, but that can be char-
acterized as having had very similar outcomes in their development
trajectories. One of the factors that may explain the differential devel-
opment paths of these two large countries is the relationship between
identity and inequality.
To explore the relationship between identity and redistribution of
resources, Shayo (2009) proposes an analytical framework that finds that
(1) national identification is more common among the poor than among
the rich, (2) national identification tends to reduce support for redistri-
bution, and (3) across democracies, there is a strong negative relationship
between the prevalence of national identification and the level of redis-

tribution. The longer persistence of poverty in India in relative terms to
China could therefore perhaps be due to the democratic processes in India
and the differential national and ideological identification of the respective
citizens, and their relative tolerance of absolute poverty.
Religion in Indian politics has played an increasing role since the
2000s, with political formations playing national and religious cards.
Hinduism’s role in politics is marked and pervasive since the ongoing
electoral successes by the BJP in the mid-2000s. Of relevance to the
redistribution debates is that by religious affiliation, India’s Muslims
have a higher relative poverty headcount than the majority of Hindus.
Whereas absolute poverty among Hindus affected almost 246 million
people (about one in five of the overall Hindu population), Muslim poor
numbered close to 45 million (more than one in three).
By comparison, China’s absolute poor population numbered 45
million unaffiliated and almost 16 million Buddhists—all living in rural
regions far from the economic centres of activity. As highlighted in the
chapter on China by Noesselt (this volume), social care, which has relied
in China mostly on families, will come under increased stress because of
demographic pressures. To establish an all-encompassing social insurance
system, China would have to increase its tax-revenue, which at 9.6% of
GDP is comparatively low for its level of development and is far below
the world average of 14.6%.
The difficulty to further raise the tax base in these conditions is also
a worry for the least well-off citizens, or those in danger of sliding back
into poverty in old age. China’s successful fight against poverty may be at
risk of regressing as older generations face uncertain retirement and social
security conditions. Therefore, religious institutions may see increased
demand for social charity and step into fill the demand.
By contrast, in India, differentials in income among religious groups
(as highlighted above) and in fertility (as highlighted by James &
Balachandran, this volume) have created intense political discussions
around demography. According to Indian survey findings, total fertility
rate (TFR) for Hindus is 2.1, while it is 2.6 for Muslims (Ranjan et al.,
2017). The finding that differential fertility could result in differential
population growth gradually shifting population composition has led to
intense political debates and several instances of regional conflicts. Some
Hindus fear that they will be ‘outbred’ by growing demographic weight
of the Muslims—and that they will lose political and cultural influence.
An important aspect of whether some groups will feel challenged by other
demographic group is the economic level and growth among the different
population groups and their relative age structure. As noted by James and
Balachandran (this chapter), the Indian sixty-plus population is expected
to triple from 92 million today to 316 million by mid-century. With
ageing, there has been a growing demand for introducing social security
schemes. Possibly, the introduction of higher coverage and more generous
social security measures could lead to a greater feeling of economic secu-
rity, reducing fertility differences between groups and lowering group
level opposition.
5 Conclusion
Religion can offer several ways of coping with poverty, including offering
meaning and hope for people in need, particularly those who are impov-
erished or lack resources. It could also strongly affect the level of financial
wealth flows. The religious composition of a country or a region may also
affect the level of social support and level of financial transfers, as welfare
and social welfare systems can be organized through religious groups
and indirectly affected by the degree of social welfare (Gruneau Brulin
et al., 2018; Feldman & Scherz, 2017; Herbert, 2018). In poorer coun-
tries, religious organizations often offer basic health and poverty relief
systems and tend to be more prominent in the provision of education,
psychological and social services compared to in more developed coun-
tries, where these services are more likely to be provided by branches of
the government (Chiswick, 2010; Young, 2009).
That some religious groups have a relatively large share living in
poverty can have a number of implications. These religions may motivate
different political behaviour if a large share of their compatriots is poor.
For instance, this could motivate a stronger preference for transfers within
the particular religions—but may also lower the ability to implement an
effective, universal and sufficiently generous social security scheme as the
economic burden would be too high on the rest of the community.
Moreover, it may also be that a greater religious share of the poor
could lower income inequality (Elgin et al., 2013; Filipova & Bednarik,
2009). The very high levels of economic inequality and poverty within
Hinduism may, for instance, be linked with a greater worship of Lakshmi,
the goddess of luck, economic prosperity and wealth (Dwyer, 2013;
Young et al., 2011). If one believes poverty is the outcome of an act
of God, destiny or outcomes too difficult to decipher, then one may be
opposed to policies that may effectively reduce this.
Several religions, including the largest ones, Christianity, Islam and

Hinduism, encourage transfers. For instance, Muslims are encouraged
to give a certain percentage of their income (2.5%) to the Zakaat as
one of the five pillars of Islam. Similar encouragements exist both within
Hinduism and within Christianity. Such systems may be easier to effec-
tuate if the share of poor within any religion is smaller or the contributing
part of the population is rich enough to be able to pay for transfer systems
without suffering from too strong reductions in own living standards.
Our finding that large shares among the Hindu, Muslim and Christian
communities are living in difficult economic conditions can influence the
likelihood that conservative interpretations of religious traditions will be
more common. Poorer religious adherents may benefit less from adjusting
to more liberal views of, for instance, marriage, gender roles, family
forms and fertility choices. When sufficiently high shares are conserva-
tive due to poverty, this may imply the entire religion is practised more
conservatively.
In effect, a greater share of poor also implies that the behaviour of
the religion as a whole may be different—they may be more likely to
emphasize the aspects of religion that relate to how to live with dire
conditions, in distress, how to cope with uncertainty and low levels of
stability. These findings on poverty coincide with other factors, including
low or lacking educational attainment, which is more prevalent among
certain religions compared to others, and long-term determinants of
wealth in the world areas where the particular religion is dominant,
including schooling investments, capital investments and investments in
family planning and stabilization or reductions of population growth.
Finally, the growing religious discordance between richer and poorer
communities in many nations could lead to growing challenges in terms
of willingness to pay, such as the case in many Western countries where
poverty is concentrated in minority groups with different religions. One
should then consider, when possible, ways of dealing with these and
try to find policies that may at least in part alleviate some of these
challenges associated with religious variation in poverty. Further studies
are needed to try to better understand trends and variations in poverty
across countries and how this may influence challenges related to poverty
alleviation.
In terms of policy recommendations, for countries dominated by reli-
gions that exhibit high inequality, there may be a case for governments to
collaborate with religious groups to reduce inequality by increasing trans-

fers to its poorest members. There could be a high tolerance of poverty
abetted by religious practices that could be detrimental to the affected
groups and to society overall. Also, by understanding that poverty is not
only randomly distributed across religious groups, we can better eluci-
date religions’ potential roles in affecting poverty risks and how different
religions may offer different pathways to escape poverty. This includes
welfare/transfer/social security systems, both of organized religion and
of religion as a guidance system. We need to better understand why
different religions have different economic outcomes, and under which
circumstance the poor are more likely to belong to certain religions.
Conversely, religious actors in countries with high levels of economic
inequality should be persuaded to reconsider their approach to their
poorest members and to consider aligning poverty alleviating measures
to be sensitive to the needs of particular religious groups. We also find
that religion-based poverty support may be stronger in less secularized
societies. There may be scope for more secular societies to interact with
religious organizations that take care of poorer members. Or it could be
that more religious organizations should concentrate on shifting its redis-
tributive systems towards those of non-religious entities, such as has been
the transition in several Western countries.
In increasingly less labour-intensive societies, religions may come to
provide increasingly social activities, help to minimize loneliness and feel-
ings of worthlessness, for instance through spiritual work that enhances
the level of well-being in society. Providing more funding for religious
organizations that have an explicit focus on not only material necessities
but also providing spiritual well-being could represent one way of dealing
with new measures of poverty within religions and act as a way of chan-
nelling workers towards activities with positive social influence. Clearly,
more research and better data on why large sections of some religious
groups end up in poverty are a matter of importance to public policy and
political order in the twenty-first century.
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holder.
CHAPTER 5
Ageing China: The People’s Republic

of China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan
Nele Noesselt
1 Introduction
The People’s Republic of China (PRC), the world’s second largest
economy, is faced with high-speed population ageing and a shrinkage of
its domestic labour force. This aggravating demographic trap of China’s
economy is closely intertwined with regime stability and regime persis-
tence—as the one-party state heavily relies on growth-based output
legitimacy and positive economic performance. To re-stabilize the system
and to secure the survival of the one-party regime, China’s political elites
have hence intensified their efforts to steer the Chinese economy towards
socio-ecological sustainability, reflecting the changing domestic demo-
graphic dynamics. New policies have been issued to build a modern social
insurance system with a strong focus on elderly care.
This chapter assesses the past developments and prospective future
trends of China’s changing population pyramid(s) and critically discusses
N. Noesselt (B)
Department of Political Science, Institute of East Asian Studies,
e-mail: nele.noesselt@uni-due.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_5
118 N. NOESSELT
the countermeasures and reform policies launched by the central govern-

ment in Beijing. This is done by reflecting the policies and instruments
used by the political elites in Beijing to secure strategic majorities for
their revised development roadmap. The political elites have to deal with
a widening gap between rural and urban areas as well as with severe devel-
opmental disparities between the flourishing coastal areas and the remote,
less developed Western provinces. Furthermore, they have to calculate the
development of the Special Administrative Regions (SAR). The chapter
hence includes three case studies on population change in the PRC’s
two SARs, Hong Kong and Macao, as well as in Taiwan. These three
local societies and their labour markets are closely intertwined with the
mainland and directly affected by Beijing’s labour market reforms and
updates to the country’s general development blueprint. The chapter
concludes with some reflections upon Beijing’s efforts to stabilize or
even to increase China’s economic power despite demographic changes
via intensified interactions with the global system. These efforts, as this
chapter argues, have to be read in the light of the refined re-stabilization
and re-legitimation strategies of hybrid authoritarian systems. While, for
quite some time, economic crises (and the demographic trap might all too
easily trigger a major one) had been seen as main drivers of regime trans-
formation, the Chinese case evidences that the Chinese one-party state
has, at least so far, successfully managed to launch and to justify major
reforms in times of stability and prosperity via the active coining of ‘crisis
narrations’.
2 The People’s Republic in the Post-Mao Era:

Constructing a Modern Socialist Society
The PRC’s 2010 National Population Census documented a rapid ageing
of China’s population (National Bureau of Statistics of the PRC, 2011)
in combination with a declining population growth rate. For the years
2000 to 2010, average population growth was about 0.57%. By contrast,
during the Maoist years (1950s to 1970s), China’s population rose from
450 million people in 1949, the founding year of the PRC, to 695 million
in 1964 and, finally, 1.3 billion people in 2010 (Peng, 2011). The focus
of the Maoist years had been on ‘great leap’ modernization and industri-
alization relying on China’s incessantly growing workforce—population
growth was hence neither controlled nor restricted. Even the ‘failures’
of Maoist mass campaigns, such as the Great Leap Forward (triggering
5 AGEING CHINA: THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, HONG KONG … 119
a devastating famine in the 1960s) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–

1976), causing millions of deaths, did not result in any visible decline
of China’s population growth rate. In sum, the overall mortality rate
declined while life expectancy almost doubled.
Centrally coordinated family planning in China via the one-child policy
was only introduced in the late 1970s, i.e. towards the end of the Mao
era, to serve the building of a modern, educated Chinese ‘socialist’ society.
China’s total fertility rate went down from 5 in the 1950s to 1.5 births per
woman in the late 1990s. The one-child policy, infamous for forced abor-
tions and severe financial sanctions in case of non-implementation, did,
however, not apply to all groups of Chinese society. National minorities
were allowed to have a second child; population growth in rural areas was
partially beyond the direct control of the party-state. China’s rural society
still favoured having male heirs, as only these were seen as increasing the
family’s workforce and, traditionally, the worshipping of the ancestors can
only be done by the family’s sons. Pre-birth sex diagnosis thus led to
abortions of females and caused a severe gender imbalance. The nation-
wide sex ratio at birth shifted from 104.88 in 1953 to 118.06 in 2010
(National Bureau of Statistics of the PRC, 2011).
Nonetheless, China’s family planning and top-down steering of the
society have brought positive effects such as a deep rise of the people’s
general level of education. The illiteracy rate dropped from 33.6% in
1964 to 4% in 2010—and, documenting a noticeable increase of people’s
welfare, GDP per capita rose from 528 Renminbi in 1982 to more than
64,640 Renminbi in 2010 (National Bureau of Statistics of the PRC,
2011; World Bank Data, 2018). In spite of that, the long-term negative
side-effects have also become visible: as a rapidly ageing society, China
will suffer from a lack of labour force to maintain its economic growth
and will also have to cope with the insufficiency of the social pension
systems and healthcare service that is, following the abolition of Mao’s
‘iron rice bowl’ (job security and free access to social insurance granted by
the party-state) pattern, still undergoing tremendous restructurings (Hu,
2012). The dependence of the non-working retired older generation on
financial support from their family members implies that one child has to
sustain two parents and four grandparents (in the Chinese debate referred
to as the ‘4-2-1’ dependency dilemma). This puts a lot of pressure on
the shoulders of the currently working generation and also explains the
additional efforts taken by parents to secure the best education for their
child—as his/her career will decide about their own past-retirement lives.
120 N. NOESSELT
In the long run, the shortage of available labour force and the financial
pressure on the younger generation might cause a steep interruption of
China’s impressive economic performance of the past few decades (Eggle-
ston et al., 2013). While in 1953 only 4.4% were over 65 years old (Sun,
1998: 4), in 2010 they accounted already for about 9% of China’s popu-
lation (Statista, 2020). In 2017, 71.8% were aged 15–64 years and 11.4%
fell into the age group of 65+ (Statista, 2020). The prospective negative
effects of these demographic changes will be unevenly distributed among
China’s regions and provinces. The overall dependency ratio (number of
people aged 0–14 or above 65 related to the number of working people,
i.e. aged between 14 and 65) for major cities and modern industrialized
provinces is much lower than in the still rather underdeveloped remote
Western and Central China provinces (Wang, 2006).
Projections that did not yet calculate the possibility of an abolition
of China’s one-child policy predicted that China’s population would
reach its peak in 2026, before rapidly declining in number from 2030
onwards (Cai, 2013). However, even calculations taking into account the
revised policy that allowed couples of one-child families to have two chil-
dren forecasted a decrease in China’s populace before 2050 (Liu et al.,
2016). Finally, in 2016, the PRC’s one-child policy was officially substi-
tuted by a two-children policy (Zhang, 2017). However, the long-term
effects are difficult to predict. In 2017, the Chinese state media even
stressed that the ageing of the Chinese society should not be seen as the
direct outcome of the Maoist one-child policy (Renmin Ribao, 2017). By
constructing a causal relation between the population changes in China
and the trends in other post-industrial societies, the Chinese Government
prevents the emergence of civil society debates on the negative aspects
of the late Maoist era and the early period of reform and opening after
1978, which would indirectly also question the legitimacy of the Chinese
Communist Party’s (CCP) one-party rule. In fact, the ageing process in
those parts of ‘China’ that were not governed by Beijing’s birth control
regulations—i.e. Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan—is similar or, in some
regards, even faster and more severe than the one of the mainland Chinese
societies.
2.1 Macao
According to the data published by the Statistics and Census Service of
Macao, the Special Administrative Region’s local population has already
entered the stage of an ageing society (Statistics and Census Service
of the Government of Macao, 2018). At the same time, however, the

official number of registered inhabitants is increasing. While the 2011
census reported a total number of 552,503 registered inhabitants (+26.5%
compared to 2001), in 2016 the official population number amounted
to 650,834 people (an increase of 17.8%) (Statistics and Census Service
of the Government of Macao, 2016). As main drivers, the 2016 census
survey identified the growing number of (labour) migrants as well as
positive birth rates. Even if one excludes non-permanent residents and
exchange students (the 2011 census listed 62,304 non-resident workers
plus 4,944 foreign students, i.e. 12.2% of the total population), the
number of local people witnessed a growth of around 10% from 2011
to 2016. However, in 2016, the percentage of people aged 65 or above
reached 9%. According to projections, the age group of 65+ is expected
to increase to almost 20% of the total local population in 2031 due to
declining birth rates, which had peaked in the mid-1980s, and higher life
expectancy (Statistics and Census Service of the Government of Macao,
2018).
Refugee waves during the Second World War, Chinese people
returning from Southeast Asian countries, especially during times of anti-
Chinese sentiments and actions, and the influx of people from Europe
and the US attracted by Macao’s casino sector and related businesses
also had an impact on the composition of local society. Beyond these
partly international migration waves, after the partial economic liberal-
ization triggered by the CCP’s Third Plenum’s decisions on reform and
opening-up (gaige kaifang ) in 1978, there was also a high inflow of
people from mainland China who got granted local resident status by the
local administration. While these groups caused a temporal increase of
Macao’s economic performance, they will also pose a major challenge to
Macao’s social insurance and healthcare system. The handover of Macao
from Portuguese control back to China in 1999 caused further demo-
graphic shifts, as parts of Macao’s external administrative elites as well
as their local cooperation partners decided to leave Macao due to the
uncertainty of the area’s future socio-economic and political development
(Leitão, 2013).
Given Macao’s history, it is no surprise that the major share of the
local population is Chinese. In 2009, a new policy by the administra-
tion of Macao granted full residence rights to children of people from
Macao born in mainland China, which further changed the demographic
scenario. The second biggest community used to be Portuguese; however,
122 N. NOESSELT
the 2016 census depicted a new scenario, according to which 4.6% of

residents born outside Macao originated from the Philippines, a rise by
98.3% compared to the 2011 census, followed by people from Vietnam
(2.4%, equalling an increase by 123.4%). Portuguese people only counted
for 1.8% of Macao’s locally registered society in 2016. The proportion of
people born outside Macao is obviously comparatively high, amounting to
roughly 60% (Statistics and Census Service of the Government of Macao,
2016).
Given Macao’s special status, the unemployment rate is comparatively
low (1.9% in the fourth quarter of 2017). The total number of working
people—375,900 (in late 2017)—also indicates that Macao is, at least
so far, not suffering from a shortage of labour force. In 2017, a total
number of 179,456 non-resident labour migrants were officially regis-
tered (given the shadow sector of the gambling industry, the real numbers
might be even higher). The net outflow of labour force in 2016 got
substituted by a net inflow of 3,800 people in 2017. The gender ratio is
almost balanced (47% male inhabitants; 53% female inhabitants), at least
compared to mainland China. 10.5% of the registered people belonged to
the 65+ age group. The majority of Macao’s current population, around
77%, however, are aged 15–64. This seems to be the combined effect
of high birth rates during the mid-1980s, influx of labour force from
mainland China and the neighbouring Asian countries—as well as the
internationalization of Macao’s economy (though the group of interna-
tional entrepreneurs and employees is most likely to leave the area after
a rather short stay at one of the local branches of international compa-
nies and banks based in Macao). The elderly dependency ratio is hence
slightly mounting (2016: 12.7%; 2017: 13.7%). However, one should also
keep in mind that the interim rise of the adult generation had caused a
partial relaxation of the situation: in 2011, the median age was between
37 and 38 (not calculating non-permanent migrant workers and exchange
students). The local share of the elder population displays an extreme
geographic variety; it is rather high in the remote islands of Macao and
relatively low around the financial and touristic centre. According to the
government’s official demographic projections, the number of inhabitants
is expected to rise to 793,600 by the year 2036 with the group of people
aged 65+ amounting to almost 25% (2016: 10–12%, depending on the
data sets analysed). The median age might rise to 46 (Statistics and Census
Service of the Government of Macao, 2018).
The Government of Macao responded to these projections by revising

the official migration policies and by encouraging the idea of active
ageing, including the idea of a postponement of the retirement age and
of opening new jobs and activities for the elder generation. In addition,
the administration has reformed the insurance sector by promulgating a
central provident fund system (Tang, 2017).
2.2 Hong Kong

In 2017, Hong Kong had a registered population of 7,391,700 people
(Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2018). From 1996 to
2016, the proportion of Hong Kong residents aged 65+ increased from
310,357 to 1,163,153 (+36.4%) (Hong Kong Census and Statistics
Department, 2016). The share of the 65+ group increased from 12.4%
(2006) to 15.9% (2016). The elderly dependency ratio rose from 14.2
to 21.8. Projections predict that one-third of Hong Kong’s society will
belong to the group of elderly people beyond the official working age
around 2040. Also, the share of people aged 80+ is growing: in 2006,
204,148 registered citizens fell into this category; in 2016, their number
was reported as having reached 340,249.
The rapid ageing of Hong Kong’s society accelerated after the
handover of the former British protectorate to (the People’s Republic
of) China in 1997 (Chan & Philipps, 2002). From 1961 to 1991, Hong
Kong’s population increased at an annual average rate of 2.5%. During the
1960s and 1970s, this was driven by rising fertility. Following the reform
and opening-up process of the Chinese mainland, population growth in
the late 1970s and early 1980s was mainly due to the waves of illegal
Chinese migrants. In 1991, about 60% of Hong Kong residents (3 million
people) were British; 34% belonged to the group of Chinese (Census
and Statistics Department Hong Kong, 1991). The 1991 Census report
(Census and Statistics Department Hong Kong, 1991) documented a
total population of 5,674,114 people (also counting 151,833 residents
temporarily away from Hong Kong). Population growth was reportedly
slow (around 1%). At the same time, Hong Kong’s population was already
ageing: The 1981 census calculated a median age of 26; the 1991 census
already listed a median age of 32. The sex ratio also witnessed some
changes: For the age group 25–44, it declined from 1,223 (1981) to
1,028 (1991). This trend, which is still continuing, seems to be due to
the inflow of female service personnel (especially from the Philippines
124 N. NOESSELT
and Thailand) and the partial outflow of high-skilled male labour force
(Skeldon, 1995).
According to projections (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Depart-
ment, 2017), Hong Kong’s population is expected to reach its peak
around the year 2046. Despite the rather high life expectancy of Hong
Kong residents, the declining population rates will be due to low birth
rates and natural death rates among the group of elderly people (80+).
Even though the One-Way-Permit allows the reunification of families in
Hong Kong by legalizing immigration of spouses and children based or
born in mainland China (HKSAR Immigration Department, 2015), in
the long-term perspective, the general number of this group of ‘migrants’
entering Hong Kong is expected to drop significantly (see also Table 1),
which indicates a rapid ageing and shrinking of Hong Kong’s populace
over the next two decades. In the next 50 years, according to projections,
Hong Kong might be going to lose 14% of its labour force.
Due to the lack of a universal common social insurance network, about
one-third of Hong Kong’s elder inhabitants live in poverty. In addition,
there is a shortage of nursing home places; the service sector for Hong
Kong’s ageing society is completely underdeveloped (Flynn, 2016). In
2014, the Elderly Commission of Hong Kong hence published an Elderly
Service Plan (Elderly Commission Hong Kong, 2014) stressing the idea
of community-based service provision.
Hong Kong, since the handover of 1997 a SAR, officially falls under
the principle of ‘one country, two systems’, which implies that Hong
Kong is allowed to have its own capitalist economic system structures
and a multi-party system—superseded by the one-party regime based in
Beijing. In connection with the handover process, further elements of
future democratic participation got written down, especially targeting the
elections scheduled for 2014. The perceived interference of the central
Table 1 Hong Kong: demographic projections
2016 2031 2046 2066
Population (in 1,000) 7,336.6 7,996.2 8,207.2 7,723.2

Sex ratio (women per 1,000 men) 852 791 728 691
People aged 15–64 (in %) 73 63 60 58
People aged 65 and above (in %) 16 27 32 34
Source Based on Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department (2017)

government in Beijing finally fuelled the so-called umbrella revolution

that joined forces with Hong Kong’s Occupy Central initiative. The
largest share of people joining the protests was aged between 18 and 29
(60.7%), while less than 1% of all demonstrators were aged 64+ (Yuen
& Cheng, 2015). Surprisingly, at least at a first glance, most people did
not protest driven by the fear of losing previously held rights and free-
doms, but rather by the feeling of uncertainty regarding their future.
Exploding housing costs, perceived lack of upward mobility chances, and
the silent decline of Hong Kong’s special status as capitalist financial zone
and renminbi hub are, in retrospect, identified as core drivers of mass
mobilization (see also: Bush, 2014). Nonetheless, in general, the struggle
for universal suffrage has become a symbol for political reform of Hong
Kong, including the socio-economic sub-sectors and the labour market.
Some researchers have also identified the fear of losing the specific Hong
Kong identity and of being sold out to mainland Chinese companies as a
main determinant of local contestation movements (inter alia Yam, 2020).
The government in Beijing seems to calculate this point. Although
the comprehensive reforms passed by the Third Plenum of the Chinese
Communist Party’s Central Committee in 2013 include the partial liber-
alization of renminbi trade outside Hong Kong and the formation of
free trade pilot zones in mainland China, the 13th Five-Year Plan still
acknowledges Hong Kong’s special status and its contribution to the
PRC’s overall economic and financial importance. The New Silk Road
(OBOR/BRI) China is constructing is hence presented not as a connec-
tivity network bypassing and outplaying Hong Kong, but as part of
China’s going global strategy that still relies on the corridor functions
of its SARs and their connections with Europe (NDRC, 2016).
2.3 Taiwan
According to the official statistics, by 1993 Taiwan has reached the stage
of an ageing society and is expected to turn into a hyper-aged society by
2025 (Republic of China National Statistics, 2018). In February 2017,
Taiwan’s official statistics documented an ageing index of 100.18. The
index relating the ratio of people aged 65 or above to the number of
people under the age of 15 displays that the number of older people
has started to exceed the number of Taiwanese youth. This is partly due
to the uneven generational pyramid caused by the influx of mainland
Chinese Guomindang officials and of members of the Republican Army
126 N. NOESSELT
after their defeat by the Chinese Communists in the late 1940s. By 2060,
the Taiwanese population is expected to amount to less than 20 million
inhabitants equalling a decrease of about five million people. Since 2013,
the number of people in their working age has started to decline (Taiwan
National Development Council, 2016).
This is also illustrated in the population pyramids (see Fig. 1), which
document increased population growth due to migration waves from the
mainland, but also a general stagnation and shrinking of the local popula-
tion over the past 20 years. Taiwan, already classified as an ‘aged’ society,
is going to become a hyper-aged society in the near future—if the current
trends continue and if demographic change is not actively compensated
via a formal legalization of immigration.
The main reason for this development is seen in the changing career
paths and value orientations of Taiwanese women leading to later
marriage and an overall decline of Taiwan’s fertility rate. Societal change
and modernization are hence the main drivers of demographic change.
To prevent an implosion of Taiwan’s pension systems, local political elites
are debating the idea to lift the pension age added by models of part-
time retirement. Moreover, the Taiwanese economy has discovered the
platinum society as a new consumer group for which they are offering
not only special elderly care services but also entertainment programmes.
In general, as a counterstrategy, Taiwan focuses on ‘active ageing’ (Chen,
2010; Lin & Huang, 2016).
Labour migration is also discussed—so far, as the Sunflower Protests
against the implementation of the service sector pact as agreed to by
the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) between the
two sides of the Taiwan Strait clearly evidences, large groups of the
Taiwanese society are more than afraid of seeing their country flooded
by “cheap” labour forces coming from the Chinese mainland and of
being dominated by Chinese firms entering the local service sector (Ho,
2015). Finally, however, the above-sketched development in the mainland
Chinese economy and society might imply that the party-state’s authori-
ties might be willing to provide novel incentives to direct labour migration
to the PRC’s own industrial and urban sites rather than accepting a
brain-drain and “outflow” of skilled labour forces.
Fig. 1 Population pyramids of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong SAR, Macao

SAR (Note Males are to the left [black], females to the right [grey]. Source
Computations by Richard Cincotta)
128 N. NOESSELT
3 CCP Counter-Measures:
Post-2013 Top-Level Coordination
In 2013, the 60-point reform package passed by the Third Plenum of the
18th Central Committee responded to the gloomy predictions of China’s
economic performance and global competitiveness by formally turning
to a two-child policy. In the long run, this might lead to demographic
stabilization at a much lower level than in 2013 but could definitely not
counter the already started shrinking and ageing of China’s current labour
force. Surveys conducted in Chinese cities even document a widespread
averseness to having more than one child: the costs of raising up a child
and paying for its school education are extremely high. Many couples
could hence not afford having a second, if the state does not launch any
initiatives to lower these costs or set financial incentives. Furthermore,
housing and daily life have been designed to serve the needs of fami-
lies composed of three. Future construction planning would hence also
have to be adapted accordingly. Finally, however, modern societies do
often display low fertility rates. And the PRC might not be an exception,
especially given the fact that birth rates started to decline already before
the official introduction of the one-child policy. Central family planning
might have accelerated this trend, but is not its sole cause. Following
these survey data showing a preference for one-child families, one might
be tempted to suggest a general lifting of any birth control and family
planning to stop the ageing of China’s society. However, one should
not forget that central family planning was accompanied by the setting
up of bureaucratic institutions supervising its implementation (Kaufman,
2003; Scharping, 2003). Abolishing these would trigger not only a rise of
China’s unemployment ratio, but also fuel tensions between the central
party elites and the local bureaucracy which might all too easily facilitate
a cascading system crisis.
The recent legalization of China’s ‘informal’ population (Gordon,
2015), i.e. second- or third-born children whose existence has not been
officially documented to evade penalties, another measure to secure the
market’s supply with labour forces, will most likely not solve the demo-
graphic dilemma. Informally, these people are already contributing to
China’s economic growth. To count this group into the official labour
statistics would hence not change the overall picture of demographic
crisis. However, the legalization of this group would at least endow them
with more citizen rights. So far, they did not have any formal contracts or
access to social services. As people without any ID card, they were neither
allowed to rent an apartment nor to marry. Nonetheless, as most of them
did not have access to higher education, they are normally only employed
as unskilled workers trained on the job.
Another precarious group is China’s floating population, i.e. labour
migrants that enter the industrial areas in search of work. Although this
group did not only facilitate the PRC’s high-speed economic growth,
but also helped to maintain the quality of life of China’s urban popu-
lation at a rather stable level, these labour migrants were deprived from
the modernization benefits of the cities they worked in. Officially, rural-
urban migration is still restricted by the household registration system
(hukou). Introduced in 1958, the hukou system was a core steering
element of China’s socialist command economy, as it allowed the control
and restriction of rural-urban migration. The Maoist hukou system was
decisive for people’s access to grain ratios, housing and public services
(Chen & Selden, 1994). Following the opening up and reform of the
Chinese economy by the decisions of the Third Plenum in 1978, the
state-owned, centrally managed economy was supplemented by capitalist
market elements—first restricted to only select sectors and local experi-
mental zones. Given the need for additional labour forces in the country’s
booming economic centres, labour migration was silently accepted. Yet
the hukou system, dividing people into rural versus urban inhabitants,
remained in place and hence blocked migrants’ access to social services in
areas outside their official hukou domain. Since the 1990s, the registra-
tion system has gradually been reformed by the introduction of temporary
urban residence permits, added by the revision of the law(s) on custody
and repatriation (as a response to widespread criticism regarding the
infamous Sun Zhigang incident in 2003)1 (Chan & Buckingham, 2008).
At the National People’s Congress in March 2013, then outgoing
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao openly requested a speeding up of
hukou reform. This was taken up by the Third Plenum in November
2013 and further pursued by the Xi-Li administration. One year later, on
4 December 2014, the Legal Affairs Office of the State Council published
a draft for the incremental relaxation—and in the long run abolishment—
of the hukou registration system via easing the regulations for small- and
1 Sun Zhigang, who forgot to carry his ID card, was arrested by the police as suspected
unregistered migrant worker, based on the custody and repatriation regulations, died in
jail—causing an official debate on the discrimination of China’s floating population.
130 N. NOESSELT
medium-sized cities and towns (Guan et al., 2016). In December 2015,

this was followed by a reform proposal that would reduce the time a rural
migrant would need to have lived and worked (and paid social insurance
fees) in a city before being allowed to apply for urban residence permit
down to six months. The hukou regulations of China’s megacities such as
Beijing or Shanghai, by contrast, remain generally based on a point system
(Zhang et al., 2016: 60)—thus allowing the recruitment of high-skilled
labour force.
The 2013 reform plan came with reform policies that facilitate rural-
urban migration not only with regard to the granting of urban hukou
status, but also with regard to land use rights. New regulations include the
right to lend or sell land use rights, so as to provide China’s rural migrants
with a financial basis that enables them to start an “urban” career.
The hukou system generally enforces a socio-economic segregation of
China’s rural versus urban inhabitants. In 1997, the Urban Employees’
Pension Programme was initiated to provide social insurance services for
urban workers, excluding, however, government and state employees.
The contribution rate to this programme varies across China; the central
government recommends a general rate of 28%, of which about 8%
should be paid by the employee. The final monthly rate upon retire-
ment depends on the years an employee contributed to the pension
programme and the calculated average wage upon retirement. Monthly
rates can later on be adjusted depending on changing average wages and
price levels. In addition, in 2009, the government launched two voluntary
programmes, the National Rural Pension Scheme and the Urban Resi-
dents Pension programme, for people aged 16 or older without regular
employment. Some cities have merged these two programmes and provide
social insurance without differentiating between people’s formal rural or
urban registration. While for provinces located in the central and western
regions these programmes are financed by the central government, for
the more prosperous eastern provinces, the system is co-financed by the
central and the local government. For government officials, party cadres
and the military, pensions were paid out of the state’s general revenues.
The benefits and final monthly rates provided by this separate pension
system are much higher than those from the public programmes outlined
above (Pozen, 2013). The PRC’s 13th Five-Year Plan put forward the
goal of setting up a unified pension system until 2020 (China Daily,
2014), seeking to overcome the divide between rural and urban social
service provisions. The main driver behind these increased efforts to
establish a nationwide, unified system is the perceived demographic trap

in combination with rising social inequality. As China’s society is rapidly
ageing, solutions for the elderly care sector are urgently needed. Espe-
cially as the perceived weakness of the social insurance systems creates an
atmosphere of uncertainty and might trigger a decline of diffuse regime
support. Community-based and informal elderly care structures “sup-
plement the traditional family care and […] fill in the gaps between
needs and the care that the government is unwilling and the family
is unable to provide” (Xu & Chow, 2011: 380). Nonetheless, these
informal patterns can only provide an interim solution—they often func-
tion as ‘self-help’ systems, especially in those regions characterized by
large-scale outflow of the younger (working age) generation. Finally, as
neither the partial relaxation of the hukou system and the legalization of
rural-urban labour migration nor the abolition of the one-child policy
will suffice to counter the approaching demographic trap, the Chinese
Government is heavily investing in e-health innovation and AI-based (arti-
ficial intelligence-based) elderly care to substitute human labour force by
self-learning systems and robots (Lee, 2018).
4 Narrating and Framing the Reforms

To win people’s support for the re-steering of the Chinese socio-economic
system structures, the central government in Beijing is operating with
strategic ‘crisis narrations’.2 A closer look at the CCP’s governance
strategy reveals that narratives of ‘crisis’ are proactively coined to facilitate
policy reform and institutional adjustments. The current restructuring
and reorganization of the PRC’s national pension system, which abol-
ishes the privileges of state officials and eliminates the division into rural
versus urban inhabitants, is presented as a necessary element of the final
stage of China’s post-revolutionary state-building process. In line with the
demands and expectations of the ‘New Left’, the government claims to re-
strengthen social justice and social equality. Addressing the business sector
and targeting China’s neoliberal camp, the reforms also include new liber-
ties for private insurance companies, hence providing new opportunities
for Chinese investors. Given the experimental, ‘anything goes’-approach
that characterized the PRC’s early reform period, the substitution of old,
2 On the ideational dimension of policy change and strategic narratives (Blyth, 2002;
Cox, 2001).
132 N. NOESSELT
inherited institutions and the establishment of a nationwide social secu-

rity net are logical steps in China’s still unfinished state-building process.
By combining these general restructuring tasks with the communicated
reform needs caused by the identified demographic trap, the political elites
manage to present the re-steering of the economy not as a correction of
past errors, but as a response to a challenge that many post-industrialized
systems are facing—not just those falling into the category of socialist
one-party states (Noesselt, 2018).
At the same time, as China’s development is directly intertwined with
the ups and downs of the world economy, the Chinese Government is
working on roadmaps to diversify export markets and trading routes to
be less vulnerable to turbulences and crises in other world regions. In this
vein, China’s political leaders have re-activated the narration of ‘national
rejuvenation’, whose origins can be traced back to the years of the infa-
mous Opium Wars of the mid-eighteenth century. The narrative of a
re-ascent to global power and status has been used by all generations
of Chinese political leaders since the late Qing Dynasty. The reference
to the traumatic experience of having been colonized and controlled by
external powers is strategically used to win support for China’s ‘going
global’ initiative and the ‘New Silk Road’—as the dream of rejuvenation
is shared by almost all groups of the Chinese society despite their internal
socio-economic cleavages and tensions.
Moreover, given the overcapacities of the Chinese economy, the CCP
government seeks to strengthen its ‘going global’ efforts. The ‘New Silk
Road’ initiative is not only an attempt to diversify the PRC’s import and
export corridors, but also a strategy to stabilize the Chinese domestic
economy via outsourcing and subcontracting (Summers, 2016). Chinese
enterprises and companies have started to establish production sites over-
seas, preferably in less developed regions on the African and the Latin
American continent. This might allow China to secure high-speed, stable
economic growth despite demographic change. However, the construc-
tion of the ‘New Silk Road’ and the further internationalization of the
Chinese economy—via the opening of free trade pilot zones and the
internationalization of the Chinese renminbi—have implications for the
economies of the Chinese SARs and Taiwan. As a response to growing
negative reactions to Beijing’s refined development strategy in Hong
Kong and in Taiwan, the political elites and their advisers are trying to
co-opt local business elites and civil society by stressing the positive spill-
over effects of the PRC’s growth model. However, as the anti-Beijing
protests in Hong Kong (Umbrella Movement) and the Sunflower Protests

in Taiwan evidence, there is a remaining and even growing fear of an
economic take-over by mainland Chinese companies.
Furthermore, as China is heavily investing in AI innovation—see the
strategy paper published by the State Council in July 2017 which is
guided by the idea to establish the PRC as the global leader in AI by the
year 2030 (State Council, 2017)—the long-term plan also includes the
setting of new global standards based on Chinese AI technologies. Given
that the PRC is running several large-scale experiments in AI-based social
governance—including e-health, e-mobility, smart cities, e-government—
these AI solutions might include features that could also be adapted by
other post-industrial societies. Hence, investment in AI-based elderly care
solutions and e-health might, first of all, focus on domestic needs of the
Chinese ageing society. Moreover, as a general response to the anticipated
‘demographic trap’ and its impact on the Chinese national economy, the
PRC has also started to encourage research and development in the fields
of Industry 4.0 and robotics. Over the past few years, fully automated
factories have been set up; large parts of industrial production now rely
on intelligent robots (Forest, 2015).
As a second step, however, Chinese companies, supported by the
central government, might offer their AI solutions on the global market
and, potentially, at a much lower price than the solutions offered by
US and European companies. This means that the lurking demographic
crisis has an unexpected effect on the PRC’s innovation strategy: Solu-
tions developed in China to face negative socio-economic side-effects
of high-speed post-industrial development might be exported to other
world regions and will increase the global competitiveness of the Chinese
economy.
5 Conclusions and Outlook

The focus of the centrally controlled steering of the Chinese population
during the Mao era had been on socialist modernization and develop-
ment. The following introduction of the one-child policy in the late 1970s
served the goal of fighting absolute poverty and setting up an educated
well-off socialist society. In a relatively short amount of time, China trans-
formed itself into the world’s second largest economy and stands out
of the group of developing countries in terms of the level of education
134 N. NOESSELT
(especially regarding alphabetization) of its society. However, the opera-

tionalization and implementation of the one-child policy did not reflect
the long-term effects. The top-down organized shrinking of the Chinese
society causes a severe decline of domestic labour force—hence, sooner
or later, reducing the PRC’s global economic competitiveness and causing
trouble for China’s weak social insurance and healthcare system. While the
economies of China’s SARs Hong Kong and Macao have always relied
on the influx of international capital and labour force, China’s main-
land economy was (and is) a rather closed system. Modest reforms are
in the making, including the setting up of pilot zones for free trade and
increased efforts to further internationalize China’s economy. Migration
policies, however, prioritize internal urban-urban or rural-urban labour
mobility.
Beijing’s ‘New Silk Road’ initiative seeks to establish a global connec-
tivity network of transportation corridors and trade hubs. China is trying
to export domestic overcapacities by securing international contracts for
Chinese companies in the fields of infrastructure, telecommunication and
grid architecture. In the long run, given China’s demographic develop-
ment trap, the New Silk Road—if successfully realized—would also allow
China to hire additional labour force along these transportation lanes and
to outsource resource-intense production. First steps in this direction have
been made by China’s textile and shoe manufacturing companies which
have started to set up production branches in Africa and Eastern Europe
(primarily in non-EU member states). This, however, does not solve the
accelerating lack of labour force in the service sector, especially regarding
the support of China’s aged and hyper-aged society. Due to internal
labour migration, many villages and small towns are mainly inhabited
by old people and ‘left-behind’ children. The elderly care and health-
care sector are often underdeveloped; given the absence of the parent
generation, the family-based care system does no longer function.
To establish an all-encompassing social insurance system, China would
have to increase its taxes. This, however, would mainly target the middle-
and upper-income classes—and hence destabilize the fragile symbiotic
relationship between the party-state and the business elites (Dickson,
2016).
The top-down steering of population growth has triggered a rapid
ageing process before the PRC could even enter the stage of a stable
well-off society. The modernization process in ‘Western’ societies took
longer and did hence not result in a similar instantaneous overheated
hyper-ageing process. While Beijing’s counter-measures mainly target the

mainland Chinese socio-economic structures, including the insurance and
elderly care sector, Hong Kong, Macao and also Taiwan have to calculate
the impact of Beijing’s reform initiatives on their local labour markets and
the composition of local inhabitants. Given the demographic transition in
mainland China, new monetary incentives might be launched to steer the
flows of skilled labour force in the direction of China’s mainland industrial
centres to secure the maintenance of the urban living standards and to
prevent a downturn of economic growth. These incentives might trigger
an outflow of labour force towards the mainland, which implies that the
ageing process in the two SARs and Taiwan would further accelerate. In
addition to competition for talents and trained labour force, driving the
waves of internal labour migration in new directions, campaigns might
be launched to recruit labour force from the neighbouring countries or
to further outsource parts of the production process. Finally, given that
a pension system based on a contract between two generations would be
bound to fail, due to the demographic imbalance, private insurance pack-
ages and state-sponsored programmes will most likely be expanded—with
unpredictable implications for the configuration of the Chinese variety
of capitalism and the power relationship between state-owned compa-
nies and the private business sector. Innovative approaches also include
the opening of the Chinese insurance service market for (private) foreign
companies, so far, however, restricted to select special pilot zones.
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Edward Elgar.
holder.
CHAPTER 6
Demographic Politics in Asia’s Super-Size

Democracies: India, Bangladesh and Pakistan
K. S. James and Arun Balachandran
1 Introduction
This chapter deals with the political implications of demographic changes
in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, with a special focus on the world’s
largest democracy—India. With a share of around 23% of the world popu-
lation today and throughout the first half of the twenty-first century,
India, Bangladesh and Pakistan play a critical role in shaping devel-
opments in world demography. These countries, which were part of
the erstwhile Indian subcontinent, all received independence nearly at
the same time. Their populations continue to grow, albeit at different
speeds. India is projected to overtake China as the country with the
world’s largest population before 2030. The populations of Bangladesh
and Pakistan are also growing in recent times but at varied pace. Pakistan
has been registering much faster growth than both India and Bangladesh.
K. S. James (B)
International Institute for Population Sciences, Deemed University,
Mumbai, India
e-mail: ksjames@iipsindia.ac
A. Balachandran
Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_6
142 K. S. JAMES AND A. BALACHANDRAN
All three countries are also known for their demographic diversity across
regions. What makes these countries stand out most in recent times are
the fast changing demographic profiles, with rapid decline in fertility both
in India and in Bangladesh, though less so in Pakistan (Bongaarts et al.,
2013; Caldwell et al., 1999; James, 2011; Sathar & Casterline, 1998).
These demographic changes in India and Bangladesh have been unprece-
dented during the last three decades and they created a drastic shift in
the age structure of the population which is widely discussed in terms
of a demographic dividend (Amjad, 2013; Jalal Uddin & Karim, 2016;
James, 2008). The share of children (ages 0–14) to the total population
in Bangladesh and India has decreased dramatically from 45 and 41%,
respectively, in 1970 to 29% by 2015. Pakistan, by contrast, lags behind in
this demographic shift, although the trend towards low fertility is clearly
observable. In general, there is no doubt to the fact that a bulk of the
youth population will define the political demography of these countries
in the coming decades. The share of children continues to be around
35% in the year 2015 as against 42% in 1970. Therefore, the adult popu-
lation growth and its characteristics are vitally important to understand
political demography in the region. While the age structure transition
is clearly evident, so is the growth of the elderly population, albeit less
pronounced (Alam & Barrientos, 2010; Giridhar et al., 2014). In India
and Bangladesh, the fastest growing population group across different
ages are the elderly, which is likely to lead to political power shifts in
favour of the elderly, but not yet in the next three to four decades.
It is important to understand that the pathways through which these
countries achieved demographic changes are considerably different from
the experience of developed countries (Vanhuysse & Goerres, 2012).
While socio-economic changes defined demographic changes in most
countries of the world, it was considerably different in the South Asian
context—particularly in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Here, the fertility
transition was driven mostly by the strong implementation of family plan-
ning programmes (Bhat, 2002; James, 2011; Khuda, 2000; Robinson,
2007; Srinivasan, 1995). The onset of the fertility transition was not
preceded by any significant improvement in living standards. In the case
of India, it was driven by the fact that a vast majority of the poor and illit-
erate accepted family planning and thereby the small family norm (Bhat,
2002). Such a push towards population control along with other ante-
natal policies has been the subject of intense political debate, particularly
in India (Srinivasan, 1995).
6 DEMOGRAPHIC POLITICS IN ASIA’S SUPER-SIZE … 143
As a result, the characteristics of the current adult population in these

countries are significantly different as compared to many other countries
undergoing fertility transitions. While the demographic changes are visible
among the current youth population, the educational and skills levels are
rather weak (James, 2011; Wazir et al., 2013). Therefore, it is important
that these countries are dealt with differently in terms of both theory
and framework while analysing the impact of demographic changes on
political demography. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first
section deals with the current demographic profile and changes in India,
Bangladesh and Pakistan. The second section focuses on the demographic
changes and its diversity in these countries with a special focus on regional
and religious demographic diversity. Section three brings out the major
impact of demographic changes on the political landscape.
2 Demographic Profile and Changes, 1990–2040

As pointed out, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan constitute a little less
than a quarter of the world population currently and this will remain so
until the middle of this century. The demographic profiles of India and
Bangladesh have close similarities; that of Pakistan lags behind in demo-
graphic change. For instance, the population growth rate between 1990
and 2015 was around 1.6% per annum for India and Bangladesh, but
around 2.3% for Pakistan. In the coming 25 years, from 2015 to 2040,
the Indian and Bangladeshi population growth rate will decline signifi-
cantly to 0.8%. Pakistan, on the other hand, will grow at nearly the same
rate as at which these two countries have grown in the past 25 years. Note
that while the population sizes of Bangladesh and Pakistan were nearly
equal in 1990, by 2040, Pakistan’s population will be almost 82 million
larger than the population of Bangladesh (Table 1). All these indicate
that India and Bangladesh have undergone rapid demographic changes in
recent decades, while Pakistan is lagging.
The causes of population change are dominated by the fertility tran-
sition and mortality changes to a minor extent, and the impact of
emigration on population dynamics has been rather negligible in all
three countries. In Bangladesh, emigration has been slightly higher than
in India and Pakistan (1.6% of net migration), but given the size of
Bangladesh’s population, its overall impact on the population growth
rate is negligible. Fertility rates in Bangladesh and India are nearly at
replacement level in 2015, with rates of 2.1 and 2.3, respectively. While
Table 1 Population size and percentage to the world population in Bangladesh,

India and Pakistan, 2015–2040
Share of age-groups in %
Country & Net migration 0–17 20–34 65+ 80+ Ratio Population City
year (in’000) of (65 Size (in density
+) to ‘000) (per
(18-64) sq.
mi.)
Bangladesh −219.36 48.97 23.93 3.12 0.25 6.50 105983 19.81

1990
Bangladesh −2526.48 35.51 26.82 4.97 0.94 8.36 160996 34.28
2015
Bangladesh −1500.00 23.81 21.97 10.99 1.96 16.85 197134
2040
India 1990 45.15 44.12 24.15 3.83 0.45 7.36 870602 19.81
India 2015 −2578.21 34.48 25.57 5.62 0.86 9.37 1311051 32.75
India 2040 −2000.00 25.75 21.92 10.72 1.99 16.88 1633728
Pakistan 139.79 49.19 22.43 3.91 0.49 8.33 107608 30.58
1990
Pakistan −1181.92 41.17 25.96 4.49 0.65 8.27 188925 38.76
2015
Pakistan −800.00 32.38 24.69 6.72 0.94 11.03 278987
2040
Source Authors’ calculations using data compiled from United Nations (2015), and World Bank
(2015a, b)
Bangladesh is already at the replacement level fertility rate of 2.1, India’s

fertility rate is likely to reach replacement level in a few years. On the
contrary, the fertility rate in Pakistan is more than one child higher and is
unlikely to reach replacement level even in 2040. Contrary to the differen-
tials in fertility, life expectancy at birth is very similar in India and Pakistan
(69 and 67 in 2015), and slightly higher in Bangladesh (73). By 2040,
Bangladesh is projected to reach a life expectancy of over 80 years while
India will be around 75 and Pakistan around 70.
Figure 1 presents the age-sex pyramid of these three countries for
the three time periods (1990, 2020, and 2040). The median ages are
presented in Table 2. For all the three countries, the population pyramid
base was broader in 1990. The median age was relatively low: at below
20 in Bangladesh and Pakistan and just above 20 in India. Bangladesh
showed a faster transition in the last 25 years with an increase in the
Fig. 1 Age-sex population pyramid for Bangladesh, India and Pakistan for
1990, 2020 and 2040 (Note Males are to the left [black], females to the right
[grey]. Source Computations by Richard Cincotta)
median age of 6 years by 2015. India’s progress in median age was to the
tune of 4 years and that of Pakistan less than 4 years. Thus, the age distri-
bution has become broader at the middle ages in Bangladesh and India
by 2015 and it continued by 2040. By 2040, Bangladesh will have the
highest median age value among the three countries at 36 years, followed
by India at 35 years, while Pakistan will only have a median age of less
than 30 years.
The ageing scenario will be nearly the same in India and Bangladesh
in 2040, with almost 11% of the population aged 65 and above, while
Pakistan will have only 7% of the population in the elderly group. Thus,
Table 2 Median age of

Country Year Median age
Bangladesh, India and
Pakistan in 1990, 2015 Bangladesh 1990 18.56
and 2040 2015 25.64
2040 35.91
India 1990 21.10
2015 26.68
2040 34.55
Pakistan 1990 18.50
2015 22.46
2040 28.18
Source Authors’ calculations using data compiled from United

Nations (2015)
not only the demographic dividend but even the ageing of the popu-
lation will be substantially delayed in Pakistan compared to India and
Bangladesh, primarily due to slow fertility decline. The ageing index
computed as the ratio of 65 and above against the 18–64 age group shows
nearly the same pattern (Table 1). Around 8% of the elderly was depended
on the working-age population in 2015 in all three countries. It will have
doubled both in India and in Bangladesh in the coming 25 years but
increased only by 3 percentage points for Pakistan.
Table 1 also shows that the proportion of people in the 20–34 age
group constitutes nearly 26% in all three countries. This, perhaps, indi-
cates that a higher proportion of the population are entering the eligible
voting ages. Over 20% of the population will continue to belong to this
age group, indicating that young adults will dominate the socio-economic
and political landscape of these countries in the coming few decades.
3 Factors Leading to Demographic Change

Another important aspect of the uniqueness of the fertility transition
in these countries is the factors contributing to fertility decline. The
factors that led to demographic changes in these countries are consid-
erably different from a classical fertility transition. The mortality decline
in the Indian subcontinent started prior to independence in 1947, much
earlier than the fertility transition. The region experienced a very slow
increase in population until about 1921, primarily due to famines and
epidemics of plague and cholera. The influenza epidemic of 1918–1919 is
estimated to have killed nearly 5% of the population in the subcontinent

(Visaria & Visaria, 1994). However, there has been progressive control
of cholera and plague resulting in a drastic decline in the death rate since
1921.
The decline in fertility, however, only began in the 1960s and only in
certain selected regional pockets. The first state to show signs of rapid
decline in fertility in India was Kerala, located in the south-west, and at
the time of the onset of fertility transition one of the poorest states in the
country (Bhat & Rajan, 1990; Krishnan 1976). Since then, Kerala has
attracted international attention because of its ‘Kerala model’ of develop-
ment. The Kerala model prioritized social indicators such as education and
health care, rather than merely economic growth. The state differed from
other regions in terms of literacy levels, particularly among women. The
female literacy level in Kerala was found to be much higher when fertility
started to decline. The Kerala model thus resulted in an uncommon
trajectory of development with the state achieving high social develop-
ment (in indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and birth
rate), even though its per capita income was low. Later, several other states
in India and also Bangladesh experienced a faster fertility transition, which
was neither backed by improvements in living standards, nor by significant
educational levels (Basu & Amin, 2000; Mahendra Dev & James, 2002;
Srinivasan et al., 1991). The unconventional fertility transition of Kerala
meant that the majority of couples adopting a small family norm were
poor, illiterate or rather with considerably low skill levels (Bhat, 2002).
The role of a strong family planning programme in reducing fertility
levels in these countries is often emphasized. It is considered that
the widespread acceptance of small family norms, irrespective of socio-
economic status, is due to the strong implementation of the programme
by the government (Srinivasan, 1995). India’s rapid population growth
has been a concern for many, especially in terms of its relationship
with economic development (Coale & Hoover, 1958). India was the
first government in the world to introduce an official family planning
programme as early as 1952, shortly after its independence in 1947. The
objective was to make family planning services widely and easily acces-
sible. Since then, the programme was fully subsidized and provided free
of cost through the public healthcare system. The consecutive decadal
census in the second half of the last century has shown increasing growth
of population within the vicinity of 2% per annum. This has led to the
introduction of several other measures like a target-oriented family plan-

ning programme wherein each health worker is given targets to achieve
certain number of female sterilizations. A variety of incentives were intro-
duced and offered to acceptors of the family planning programme as part
of the strategy to voluntarily promote family planning and fertility control
(Srinivasan et al., 2007). Similar family planning programmes have been
adopted in Bangladesh and Pakistan, mainly through collaborations with
NGOs and through female health workers.
India’s family planning programme, indeed, has a checkered history
(Rao, 2004). The increasing concern over the population growth has
led to its forceful implementation, particularly in the emergency years
(1975–1977) (Srinivasan, 1995). The fall of the government shortly
after emergency is often squarely attributed to undue government inter-
ference in the forceful implementation of family planning (Srinivasan,
1995; Visaria & Chari, 1998). Another major criticism was the large-scale
promotion of female sterilization in the country with women bearing the
main burden of contraception. Female sterilization continues to be the
major contraceptive method in India, accounting for nearly 86% of the
total use of modern contraceptives (International Institute for Popula-
tion Sciences, 2017), compared to just 7% in Bangladesh, where pills and
condoms are the leading methods of contraception (DHS Bangladesh,
2016). In Pakistan as well, the female sterilization constitutes only 28% of
the total contraceptive use (Carton & Agha, 2012). It is therefore clear
that the demographic transition in these countries is also not without
any political upheavals. The role of the state in promoting family plan-
ning, and particularly from the point of view of women, has been widely
criticized in all these countries (Sen et al., 1994). Although other expla-
nations of fertility transition are at times suggested—such as diffusion of
contraceptive knowledge (Guilmoto & Rajan, 2005; Mahendra Dev &
James, 2002), poverty-induced fertility transition (Mencher, 1980) and
the role of social development (Bhat & Rajan, 1990)—government inter-
vention remains one of the strongest factors behind the fertility transition
especially in India and Bangladesh.
4 Regional and Religious Demographic Diversity

Perhaps, one of the important factors that define the political demography
of these three countries is the wide regional heterogeneity in demographic
patterns. India’s vast diversity in languages, cultures and religions is well
Table 3 Share of population in major religious groups in India, Bangladesh and

Pakistan, 2015
Country Hindu Islam Christian Other religions
India 79.5 14.4 2.5 3.1

Pakistan 1.9 96.4 1.6 0.03
Bangladesh 9.1 89.8 0.2 0.60
Source Central Intelligence Agency (2017)
known (see also Skirbekk & Navarro, this volume). But it is also impor-
tant to note that the country displays a considerable heterogeneity in
socio-economic and demographic patterns across its various regions. This
is also true with regard to Bangladesh and Pakistan, though less than
in India. Both in India and in Bangladesh, some regions have achieved
replacement level fertility several years back while other parts are yet to
reach that level leading to considerable differences in the age structure
as well as the population growth patterns. This also has implications for
the internal migration in these countries. In Pakistan, most regions are far
above replacement level fertility, but at the same time there are consider-
able differences in fertility across regions. Religious differences in fertility,
particularly among minorities, are also a subject of wider political debates
(Devine & White, 2013; Jejeebhoy & Sathar, 2001; Pakistan Bureau of
Statistics, 2013). While India and Bangladesh have significant subpopu-
lations other than the major religious group (Hindus and Muslims), in
Pakistan only 3% of the population are non-Muslims (Table 3).
Such differences in regional and religious demographic patterns have
wider political implications. In this section, regional and religious differ-
ences are brought out separately for the three countries, and the
implications of such changes are discussed in the subsequent section.
4.1 India: Countries Within a Country

The fertility transition in the south of India was relatively early. Kerala
was one of the pioneers in the fertility transition as early as in the 1960s
(Bhat & Rajan, 1990; Krishnan, 1976). Later on, in the 1980s, other
southern states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh had also
entered into the rapid fertility transition (James, 2011). Subsequently, the
transition also spread to many other states in the western and eastern
regions of the country. However, the Hindi-speaking central Indian states

(Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh), constituting 42%
of the India’s population, showed negligible signs of changes in fertility
in the 1980s. This has led the famous Indian demographer Ashish Bose
to call these states BIMARU , meaning sickness in Hindi (Mishra, 2014).
Later, each of these states was divided into two, resulting in a total of six
states. Even today, these states continue to have high fertility compared to
the other parts. According to the latest data available for the year 2016,
fertility levels in three of these states continued to be above 3 children per
women (SRS Statistical Report, 2016). The southern, eastern and western
states mostly have fertility levels of less than or near to 2. Figure 2 shows
the differentials in total fertility rate (TFR) across Indian states. Similarly,
the rural-urban fertility differentials are also striking in India. The urban
India, constituting nearly 30% of the total population, has already reached
a fertility level of less than 2.
Not only the demographic patterns but also the differences in other
socio-economic characteristics between these regions are striking. Along
with the fertility transition, the socio-economic conditions of southern
states have improved considerably. Therefore, the regional heterogeneity
in India cannot be viewed only in terms of demographic pattern but has
clear demarcation for both, the social and economic development. The
per capita income of southern states is invariably higher than the national
average. Central India, on the contrary, has the lowest socio-economic
development in the country (Economic Survey, 2018).
Most of the states with lower levels of fertility have become an attrac-
tive destination for labour in-migrants due to severe scarcity of manual
labour and higher wages within these states (Rajan, 2013). This is entirely
legal as the internal movement of the citizens does not have any legal
constraints in India. Most of these labourers are working in the construc-
tion sector which has grown significantly in the 2000s as a result of an
economic boom in the southern states. However, it can be observed that
the in-migrants are subjected to bad working and living conditions (Rajan
& James, 2007). The discrimination due to differences in language,
culture and adverse living conditions is often concerned with regard to
the migrant workers. There are instances where the resident population
perceives that the in-migrants bring an alien culture and are responsible
for increasing crime rates (Basheer, 2015; United Nations, 2015).
Religious differentials in subpopulation growth have become a subject
of intense debate in India, particularly since the late 1990s (Alagarajan &
Fig. 2 Total Fertility Rate (TFR) across Indian States, 2016 (Source
Data from http://www.censusindia.gov.in/vital_statistics/SRS_Report_2016/7.
Chap_3-Fertility_Indicators-2016.pdf)
Kulkarni, 2008; Bhat & Zavier, 2005; Dharmalingam & Morgan, 2004;
James & Nair, 2005). The growth rate of the Muslim population has been
around 30% between 1961 and 2001 and around 25% since then; that of
the Hindu population has been around 25% between 1961 and 1981 and
around 20% between 1981 and 2011 (Bhat & Zavier, 2005). According
to the latest round of the National Family Health Survey, the number
of children for Hindus is 2.1 as against 2.6 for Muslims (International
Institute for Population Sciences, 2017). Such differences are frequently
the subject of wider political debates on the future religious composition
of the country.
In addition to religion, the caste factor also plays a pivotal role in
understanding population dynamics and fertility transition in India. The
socio-economic backwardness of the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Sched-
uled Tribes (ST) are well recognized in the country. The SC consists of
16.6% and ST 8.6% of the total population (Census of India, 2011). As
a result of the backwardness, the fertility levels have been higher among
these caste groups. The fertility rate among SC is 2.3 children per women
while that of ST is 2.5 children per women as against 1.9 children for
the upper caste group (International Institute for Population Sciences,
2017). A Socially Backward Classes Commission headed by the Indian
parliamentarian B P Mandal was set up by the government in 1979.
It also identified that there are ‘other backward castes’ (OBC) in India
that are out of the category of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Earlier, the reservation in government jobs and admission to the public
educational institutions were implemented only for Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes. With the Mandal Commission Report, the government
had decided to extend the reservation policies for the OBC category as
well. Around 40% of India’s population are classified into this OBC cate-
gory. The fertility rate among OBC was slightly lower than among the SC
and ST groups, but higher than the forward caste (2.2 children) (Inter-
national Institute for Population Sciences, 2017). Overall, diversity by
region, religion and caste has both demographic and political significance
in the country. These factors have often been considered as the reason for
success or failure of the different political parties in the country.
4.2 Pakistan: Regional Diversity with Religious Homogeneity

Interstate and rural-urban differentials can be observed in Pakistan as well.
While the state of Punjab has a high Human Development Index (HDI)
with high achievements in health, education and economic growth, the
state of Balochistan has very low achievements in these domains (Pakistan
National Human Development Report 2017, 2018). District level differ-
entials in human development are even more stark. While the capital city
of Islamabad has a fertility rate of 3.0 (much lower than the national
level of fertility of 3.8), the province of Balochistan has a fertility rate as
high as 4.2 children per women. Undoubtedly, such variation also has
direct links with the prevailing socio-economic conditions of the region.
While around 60% of women use contraceptives in the province of Islam-
abad, only around 20% do so in Balochistan (Pakistan National Human
Development Report 2017, 2018).
Furthermore, urban areas have better levels of human development
than their rural counterparts. Levels of human development in urban
Pakistan can be compared with those in South Africa (HDI value of
0.66), whereas those in rural Pakistan are as low as in Togo (0.49). While
the fertility rate of urban Pakistan is lower at 3.2, it is nearly one child
higher in rural Pakistan. Pakistan is currently also experiencing a high rate
of urbanization, at 2.77% annual growth (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics,
2017; Pakistan National Human Development Report 2017, 2018).
Religious diversity is rather negligible: around 96% of the population of
Pakistan are Muslims. Christians and Hindus form only a minority, with
around 1.6 and 1.9%, respectively. The fertility rate is nearly the same for
Hindus and Muslims in Pakistan (Hackett et al., 2015).
4.3 Bangladesh: Densely Populated; Sparsely Heterogeneous

Bangladesh is among the countries with the highest population density
in the world. Compared to India and Pakistan, the regional differences
are relatively small. Although there are urban-rural differences in fertility,
they are not as sharp as in the case of Pakistan or India. The fertility
rate is around 1.7 in urban areas and 2.2 in rural areas. Divisions such
as Mymensingh and Barishal have higher fertility rates of 2.44 and 2.34,
respectively, while the divisions of Rangpur and Sylhet have lower fertility
rates of 2.22 and 2.09, respectively (DHS Bangladesh, 2016). In the
past 25 years, Bangladesh has registered a sharp reduction in fertility
and an increase in life expectancy in almost all the regions and reduced
the regional diversity significantly. While Islam is the official and domi-
nant religion of Bangladesh, the constitution of the country guarantees
freedom of religion and grants equal rights to citizens irrespective of their
religious affiliation (Bangladesh’s Constitution, 2018). Bangladesh has a
higher share of Hindus compared to Pakistan. The fertility levels among
Hindus and Muslims are nearly the same in Bangladesh.
5 The Political Repercussion

of Demographic Change
The changing demographic profiles and the considerable regional and
religious diversities in these countries have considerable political repercus-
sions. The rapid age structure transition itself has its own effect in India
and Bangladesh, particularly on the voting pattern. As all three coun-
tries follow a parliamentary form of democracy, public policies and public
discourse are likely to be affected by the demographic changes. Five major
implications deserve discussion.
5.1 Age Structure and Voting Pattern

The demographic transition and the resulting shifts in the relative size
of age groups have various impacts on democratic processes, particu-
larly in India and Bangladesh. Salient political debates in both countries
now consider how to take advantage of the youth bulge. Job creation
has therefore become a critical part of government policies. In India,
the number of graduates entering the labour market is much higher
than the employment opportunities available to them at present. This
phenomenon is often called “educated unemployment” (Gandhi et al.,
2014). As already pointed out, the characteristics of the youth popula-
tions in these countries are significantly different from what is expected
from a country with similar drastic demographic changes. Most young
citizens are semi-literate or with only elementary education, which pushes
them to work in the countries’ informal sector. Generally, nearly 90% of
the Indian workforce is in the informal sector (ILO, 2018) and similar
levels are obtained in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Women in particular find
it hard to get into the labour market (Desai, 2010). South Asia in general
has a very low female labour force participation compared to the world.
The work participation of females is as low as 23.9% in Pakistan, 27.3
for India and 33.4% for Bangladesh in 2015 (World Bank, 2015a). Thus,
it is often argued that these countries are unable to take advantage of
the demographic dividend (Basu, 2011; Bloom & Canning, 2008; Desai,
2010).
The lack of employment opportunities for the youth has caused serious
and direct political reactions and has been among the major debates
in several central elections in India over the past two decades. Succes-
sive governments formulated different policies aiming at improvement of
employment levels and quality of the workforce. The Mahatma Gandhi

National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) launched
in India in 2005 was directed at giving 100 days of assured employment to
every rural household in 600 districts in India. One-third of the proposed
employment in the scheme was reserved for women. The applicant for
the scheme was also entitled to a daily unemployment allowance in cases
where he/she was not provided employment within 15 days. Along
with other schemes aimed at improving the levels of employment in the
country, the Government of India also made efforts to improve the skills
of the workforce and improve the quality of employment. The govern-
ment created a Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship apart
from the already existing Ministry of Labour and Employment in 2014.
However, the unemployment situation in the country is still grave. In
2018, the Indian Railways (which employs the largest number of people
in the country) received 23.7 million applications to fill 0.13 million
vacancies (Express, 2018). These issues are on the verge of becoming
more politically salient in the near future.
Voting turnout is relatively low in the subcontinent, although it did
increase between 1990 and 2015 from around 62 to 66% for India, and
from around 46 to 54% for Pakistan. Bangladesh’s voting turnout has
remained more or less constant at around 51% during the same period,
in part due to instances of violence during recent elections (Interna-
tional Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2015). Already
the largest democracy in the world, India keeps on growing. According
to the Election Commission of India, 814.5 million Indians were eligible
to vote in the 2014 elections. Around 23.1 million of the total eligible
voters in India were of the age group of 18–19 years alone. There are
also substantial regional variations within these countries in terms of
participation in democracy. For instance, the Indian state of Bihar had
a low voting turnout of 56 percent whereas the state of West Bengal
recorded a rate of around 82% (Statistical Reports of Lok Sabha Elections,
2014). Similarly, there are variations in voting patterns across gender. The
number of women voters is significantly lower than their male counter-
parts. In India, around 20% of the eligible female voters, which constitute
around 65 million women, are ‘missing’ from the electorate (Kapoor
& Ravi, 2014). Women have also been underrepresented in the central
and state assemblies of these countries. Questions pertaining to this are
rising in India’s public sphere. Major political parties in India are assuring
more women participation in electoral politics in their manifestos. The
Women’s Reservation Bill was introduced in India in 2008 to ensure

women’s representation by reserving one-third of seats in central and state
assemblies to women. However, this bill could not be passed in the parlia-
ment due to differences among the political parties. Similarly, the low
voting percentage is also due to increases in levels of internal migration.
Presently, due to lack of well-developed official documentation, there is
no system to accommodate the short-term and informal migrants in the
electorate (Rajan et al., 2019). Thus, the increasing levels of internal
migration are further decreasing the already low voting percentage.
Not surprisingly and despite the fact that in all three countries youth
dominate in terms of proportion as well as the voting share, the parlia-
mentarians are much older compared to the population age distribution.
In India, most of the members of the parliament are between 46 and 60,
whereas the median age of the country is 28. In 2014, around 25% of
the members in the lower house still belonged to a cohort that was born
before the independence of the country (Statistical Reports of Lok Sabha
Elections, 2014).
The demographic dividend is likely to continue to have an effect
in India and Bangladesh over the next few decades, and for Pakistan
much longer still. Undoubtedly, India and Bangladesh will probably
continue to feel the pressure of ageing populations beyond the 2030s
(Balachandran, 2020; Balachandran et al., 2019). The sixty and plus
population is expected to triple from 92 million today to 316 million
by mid-century, when it will constitute one-fifth of the population in
India. With the increasing elderly population in different states, there
has been a huge demand for introducing social security schemes. With
the majority of the population both in India and in Bangladesh working
in the informal sector, there is hardly any old-age security available.
Currently, the old-age security burden is being borne by the family. With
the changing demographic profiles, that may no longer be possible in the
future. Governments launch programmes to ensure old-age security at
least among the poor sections of the population from time to time (Barri-
entos, 2012). The Department of Social Services under the Ministry of
Social Welfare in Bangladesh, in 1998, launched a monthly allowance
programme for disabled older population from poor backgrounds. In
Pakistan, a scheme called Employees Old Age Benefits Institution was
launched in 1976 to support retired poor elderly. In India, the Indira
Gandhi Old Age Pension Scheme was launched in 2007 and provided a
monthly pension for the poor elderly population. However, the amounts
provided are relatively small and, due to poor targeting, do not cover
the eligible. The work-based pensions are allotted only to workers from
certain formal sector, whereas most of the workers in these countries are
working in the informal sector.
5.2 Regional Diversity and Constitutional Politics

Demographic disparities across regions have serious implications at
different levels of politics and policies, and even for larger questions of
political order and stability. This is perhaps less the case in Bangladesh
than in the more regionally diverse India and Pakistan. As Pakistan has
not entered the last stages of demographic transition, the political reper-
cussions are likely to last much longer than in India, where an advanced
demographic transition goes hand in hand with considerable regional
heterogeneity already today. For instance, the Indian Constitution spec-
ifies a fixed number of members to the parliament per state, which has
been fixed in accordance with the population Census of 1971. Initially,
the parliament seats were frozen till 2001. However, the date has been
extended to 2026 due to severe opposition from regions with rapid demo-
graphic changes, who stood to lose many seats. The states with advanced
demographic changes argued that they were being punished because they
were successful in implementing governmental family planning initia-
tives. The Constitution requires this arrangement to be re-analysed in
2026, and undoubtedly, it will have serious political implications. It is
expected that the representation in the Indian Parliament will undergo
rapid changes, with the central Indian states receiving a substantially
higher number of seats once the number of seats is unfrozen. This in turn
is likely to create more political imbalances and conflicts. As mentioned,
the laggards in the fertility transition are mainly the Hindi-speaking
central Indian states, which currently account for nearly 42% of the total
population. At the same time, it is pertinent to mention that there is
an inherent imbalance in the number of seats based on population at
present. For instance, the four southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil
Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala account for just over 21% of the population
but get 129 Lok Sabha seats. By contrast, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the
two most populous Hindi states, account for 25.1% of the population,
but get only 120 seats (Firstpost, 2011). Hence, an average person from
the South Indian state of Kerala is 1.5 times more represented than an
average Bihari. A change in seat allocation can have significant impact on

the Indian electorate.
Nevertheless, the demographic heterogeneity in India also provides a
unique opportunity to fill the labour deficit within the country through
inter-state migration. Of late, there has been a large inflow of migrants
from the northern belt, having high a fertility rate, to the southern
region with below-replacement level of fertility. This is known as replace-
ment migration. These migrants are generally drawn from less privileged
sections in terms of both caste and class hierarchy in India and as such
may have to circumvent various hardships. Although migration as such
may be development driven, there is the possibility of increased conflict
and unrest in the destination regions (Rajan & James, 2007). A study
using cross-regional, time-series data on violence in Indian states (1989–
2009) reveals the possibility of escalating violence due to demographic
heterogeneity in the country (Forsberg et al., 2011).1
Another major impact of demographic heterogeneity in India is on
allocation of federal resources across states. The Finance Commission is
a constitutional body which is appointed every five years and decides,
among other functions, on the terms of allocating federal funds to
different states. Since 1971, the allocation of federal funds has been based
on a formula that gives weight to states chiefly based on their popu-
lation share (based on the 1971 Census) and their level of economic
backwardness. However, the new finance commission formed in 2017
proposed in its Terms of Reference (ToR) to convert the formula into
population based on 2011 Census data. This proposal saw a massive
resistance from the southern Indian states, which argued that they are
being penalized for successfully implementing a national policy aimed
at reducing fertility. Moreover, these states are also economically well-
off, and they substantially contribute to the total tax share going to
the federal government. Southern states therefore argued that though
1 For instance, Bengaluru, a city in the southern state of Karnataka saw agitation against
excessive use of Hindi in communication. This anti-Hindi agitation needs to be seen from
the backdrop that Hindi is the lingua franca of the migrant population to the city which
grew tremendously over the past two decades. Similarly, the state of Maharashtra saw
several agitations seeking reservations to the Marathi population (who are the natives of
the state) in employment. This happens in the backdrop of Maharashtra being a state
with highest number of migrants. Migrants are mainly from the states with lower levels
of developments and higher number of youths, such as the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar
and Madhya Pradesh.
they contribute significantly to federal funds, they do not receive enough

in re-allocations from the finance commission. The same is true with
respect to the allocation of budgets from federal government to the states
for different health programmes. In the year 2005, the Government of
India has made much bigger budget allocations to improve population
and health indicators particularly in the demographically lagging states
in the northern and eastern part of the country. The states which have
progressed in demographic and health indicators got a much lower share
than the demographically backward states. This is often considered as a
disincentive for performance.2
5.3 Religious and Caste Diversity

Other important aspects of political demography in these countries are
the religious differences in population and its growth differentials. Again,
this dimension is most relevant in India, with its huge religious and caste
differences in demography and socio-economic standing. Such differences
are not found in Bangladesh, while Pakistan has a 96% Muslim popula-
tion. The higher growth rate of the minority Muslim population in India
has often been a matter of intense concern in certain political circles (Joshi
et al., 2003; Reddy, 2003). While it is true that Muslim fertility is high, it
is important to note that Muslims generally tend to live in areas with the
highest fertility in India, particularly in the northern states (James & Nair,
2005). Studies also found that the Muslim fertility follows nearly the same
pace of transition as the Hindus’, particularly in the period of accelerated
fertility decline in the country (Krishnaji & James, 2005). Although many
apprehensions on Muslim fertility and Muslim population becoming a
majority religion in the future are not valid, the growth differences have
significant political repercussions in the country (Bhat & Zavier, 2005).
Politicians have often used this as a tool to scare the majority religion into
voting for them.
2 Interestingly, major political leaders from all southern Indian states have been raising
this issue as discrimination against them and discussed it as one of the major election
propagandas against the ruling party at the federal government (Balachandran, 2018;
Daniyal, 2018; New Indian Express, 2018). A formal meeting of the South Indian finance
ministers took place in early 2018 to form an alliance to raise voice against such decisions.
A small fraction of leaders from South India are also raising slogans to form a new
South-Indian country (The News Minute, 2018).
The growth differentials among caste groups in India, however, have

not led to direct criticism on their demographic behaviours as it is consid-
ered that caste diversity and backwardness are the result of centuries of
discrimination against them. The reservation policies in the realms of jobs
and education were specifically introduced for SC and ST groups in India3
and this limitation was enshrined in the Indian Constitution. However,
the Government of India adopted a ‘reservation policy’ in the late
1980s whereby people from OBC are given a quota in various govern-
mental educational institutions and employment opportunities (Thorat
& Newman, 2010). Since then, several caste groups in India have been
claiming for status of ‘OBC’ to gain the benefits of the reservation poli-
cies. The ‘upper caste’ voices are also raised on the non-efficiency of caste
system and on the ‘unfairness’ that it has created for them. Various polit-
ical parties have been raising the issues related to caste with regard to
different benefits from the government. Caste is seen as a major deter-
minant of many socio-economic outcomes and the Government of India
conducted a first Socio-Economic and Caste Census in independent India
in 2011. The results of the census showed that the performance of lower
castes is lower (Census of India, 2011). Given the likely demographic
developments of lower castes, caste and caste composition will no doubt
play a major role in Indian politics in coming decades.
The minorities in Pakistan are mostly concentrated on few areas
(Mahmud, 1995). There are reserved seats for minority communities in
different provincial and national elections. However, there is criticism that
religious minorities are discriminated against and there are apprehensions
about the decrease in the share of religious minorities (Roche, 2016). Not
only across religious groups, but even within the majority religion, vast
differences exist in Pakistan. Instances of sectarian violence have occurred
between the Sunni and Shia Muslims since the 1980s. With considerable
demographic and socio-economic differences between them, there are
increasing possibilities of conflicts between these groups even in future.
3 Additionally, several political parties were eager to get support of the caste groups
by announcing different policies and programmes for them. Even political parties were
formed primarily to unite such caste groups and these were also successful in different
contexts (Lee, 2013). There is also strong criticism and counter-criticism of parties that
favour certain caste groups or discriminate against others (Jaffrelot, 2012).
6 Conclusion
Overall, it is clear that demographically India and Bangladesh show very
similar patterns of change, with fertility levels and age structure currently
at almost the same level. Pakistan, on the other hand, shows only early
signs of fertility transition and has a substantial proportion of child
population. Even in the coming 25 years, Pakistan will remain a young
population while India and Bangladesh will show signs of an ageing
society. What is striking, particularly in India and Pakistan, is the wide
regional and religious heterogeneity in demographic patterns. Such differ-
ences are narrow in the case of Bangladesh. All this will lead to significant
political upheavals in these countries.
As democratic countries, all three nations are struggling to address
the large challenges posed by the demographic transition, and the polit-
ical implications of demographic changes are numerous. Tensions in the
resource distribution across regions, decisions on the number of parlia-
mentary seats and chances for conflict due to demographic defences can
all be observed in India and to some extent, in Pakistan. A major chal-
lenge for these nations will be to provide employment opportunities for
the young population, particularly the youth, to take advantage of the
demographic dividend. All three countries have a very poor record in
providing female employment despite drastic fertility transition. All these
critical challenges are at the heart of discussion, both in the public and
among political classes, but initiatives to address them had limited success.
Undoubtedly, demographic changes in these countries will continue to
have immense importance for the demographic and political order of the
globe, if only because of their sheer population size, at currently almost a
quarter of the world’s population.
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holder.
CHAPTER 7
Getting Old Before Getting Rich

(and not Fully Realizing It): Premature Ageing
and the Demographic Momentum
in Southeast Asia
Patrick Ziegenhain
1 Introduction: Political Demography

in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines
Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are three major countries in
Southeast Asia with a total current population of around 400 million
people. They share many common characteristics in terms of culture,
language and history. All of them became independent from their respec-
tive colonial power countries in the aftermath of the Second World War.1
As will be explained in more detail, they all started as poor developing
countries, and in the decades following independence witnessed remark-
able population growth accompanied by major improvements in living
1 Indonesia from the Netherlands in 1945/1949, Malaysia from the UK in 1957/1963

and the Philippines from the United States of America in 1946.
P. Ziegenhain (B)
President University, Cikarang, Indonesia
e-mail: p.ziegenhain@web.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_7
168 P. ZIEGENHAIN
conditions in these countries. Indonesia is the fourth largest country in

the world in terms of population size (after China, India and the US).
The country is home of at least 400 hundred different ethnic groups
and cultures. However, nearly 40% of the population can be classified as
Javanese, the dominant ethnic group of Indonesia. Indonesia’s national
motto is “unity in diversity” (Bhinneka Tunggal Ika) and reflects the
multitude of ethnic, cultural and linguistic features in the world’s largest
archipelago, which stretches more than 5000 kilometres from West to
East. In the latest (2016) Human Development Index (HDI) of the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Indonesia is ranked
113th in the world (out of 188). Indonesia’s neighbour Malaysia has a
similar cultural, linguistic and historic background as the western parts
of Indonesia. However, the country is much smaller and has seen, not
least due to the British colonial past, a massive influx of labour migrants
from South China and India in the first half of the twentieth century.
After independence in 1957, Malaysia progressed quite fast and devel-
oped markedly better in socio-economic terms than Indonesia. Malaysia
is now (together with the small city states of Singapore and Brunei) one
of the wealthiest and most developed states in Southeast Asia. In the
HDI, Malaysia is ranked 59th in the world (out of 188). The Philip-
pines is another densely populated archipelagic state in Southeast Asia.
With more than 100 million citizens, it is the 12th most populated
country worldwide. The largest part of its population is relatively closely
connected to Malaysians and Indonesians in ethnic and linguistic terms.
However, after centuries under Spanish colonial rule, almost 90% of the
Filipinos are Roman-Catholic. Another major external influence was the
colonial period under the US from 1898 to 1946, which greatly impacted
the current economic, cultural and political system. In the latest HDI,
the Philippines are ranked 116th in the world, only three places below
Indonesia.
This chapter will first give a concise description of the major demo-
graphic trends in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, and then give a
condensed explanation of these population developments, before drawing
some tentative conclusions about the demographic implications for all the
three countries in a comparative perspective. I will specifically focus on the
challenges which have arisen in relation to the pension system, the labour
market, the migration movements, the urbanization as well as the conse-
quences of demographic change in different regions and ethnic/religious
groups. In terms of methodology, I performed a critical examination of
the existing literature on demographic changes in Southeast Asia and
7 GETTING OLD BEFORE GETTING RICH … 169
interpreted demography data in a comparative perspective. For the demo-

graphic data, I relied on the Database Global Political Demography
(Goerres et al., 2020). Another source was the World Bank Development
Indicators, which are available online. Additionally, international litera-
ture with a specific focus on Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines was
used to gain insights into the political and economic consequences of
demographic change in Southeast Asia.
2 Demographic Trends, 1990–2040

Since their respective independence shortly after the Second World War,
all three countries have witnessed remarkable population growth. In
Indonesia, the population more than doubled within 40 years—form 72.8
million people in 1950 to 181.4 million people in 1990. The first census
in Malaysia in 1970 counted a population of about 11 million people. As
Table 1 shows, a significant rise in the population has taken place since
Table 1 Demographic data
Indonesia Malaysia Philippines
Size of age groups: 1990 36.43 1990 37.10 1990 40.94

0–14 as % of 2015 27.69 2015 24.52 2015 31.95
population 2040 21.36 2040 18.97 2040 25.84
15–64 as % of 2015 67.17 2015 69.64 2015 63.47
population 2040 67.21 2040 68.26 2040 65.92
>65 as % of population 2015 5.17 2015 5.86 2015 4.58
2040 11.43 2040 12.76 2040 8.24
65+/15–64 ratio 1990 1:15.80 1990 1:16.42 1990 1:17.80
2015 1:12.98 2015 1:11.81 2015 1:13.86
2040 1:5.88 2040 1:5.35 2040 1:8.00
Absolute size of the 1990 181,436.8 1990 18,211.1 1990 61,947.3
population in mio 2015 257,563.8 2015 30,331.0 2015 100,699.4
2040 312,439.3 2040 38,852.9 2040 137,020.5
Population 1990 100,154 1990 54,903 1990 207,758
density/(people per sq. 2015 142,507 2015 93,511 2015 341,135
km of land area)
International in and 1990 −0.21 1990 1.64 1990 −0.82
out migration as % of 2015 −0.32 2015 0.82 2015 −0.65
population 2040 −0.22 2040 0.64 2040 −0.33
Source Goerres et al. (2020)

170 P. ZIEGENHAIN
then. The number of citizens has nearly tripled to over 30 million people.
It is expected that the population of Malaysia will continue to grow up
to 38.5 million people in 2040. Similarly, the Philippines witnessed enor-
mous growth in the first decades after their independence in 1947. The
population grew from 20 million citizens in 1950 to 61.9 million in 1990,
thus tripling within 40 years. The growth has continued, but at a lower
speed, reaching 100.7 million citizens in 2015. For the year 2040, the
UNDP predicts a population size of 137.0 million people.
As Table 1 shows, the similarities between Indonesia, Malaysia and
the Philippines, despite their country-specific and historic differences, are
remarkable in terms of political demography. All three countries have
witnessed an extremely high population growth between the 1950s to
around 1990. At the same time, the fertility rate declined to a great
extent and life expectancy grew. Compared to other countries world-
wide, the transformation from a very young to an ageing society within a
few generations in these three Southeast Asian countries is very fast. The
same transition took almost 150 years in the more developed countries
of Western Europe or the US (Goldstone, 2012: 19f.). The transforma-
tion within these societies becomes more visible when we analyse the age
structure over time. Table 1 shows the distribution of different age sectors
in all three countries in 1990, 2015 and 2040. In 1990, Malaysia still had
a very young population, with a high number of young people under the
age of 15 years and only very few senior citizens over the age of 65 years.
This had already changed to some extent by 2015, when the propor-
tion of young people under 15 years dropped quite steeply from 37.1 to
24.5%. This trend will continue. By 2040, the share of young people will
decline (despite only a slight decrease in absolute numbers) to 18.9% of
the total population. In correlation with the rising life expectancy, the
median age in Malaysia will further rise. While it was only 21.56 years in
1990, it had already grown to 27.68 years in 2015. For 2040, the UN
predicts a further increase up to 37.65 years.
In Indonesia, young people under 15 years of age were a quite large
group, accounting for 35.43% of the total population in 1990. Their
absolute number grew only slowly until 2015. However, their share of
the total population was nearly 10 percentage points lower in 2015 than
in 1990. This trend will continue until 2040, when the proportion of
young people under the age of 15 years is expected to drop to 21.36% of
the total population. Slowly, the age structure of the population will shift
from a still relatively young population pyramid to one characterized by

a significant ageing of the population, with the share of the population
above the age of 65 years increasing from 5.17% to 11.43%.
The median age in Indonesia has also increased significantly from
21.3 years in 1990 to 28.0 years in 2015. It is expected to grow to
34.3 years by 2040. But even then, Indonesia will still not yet have an
‘old’ population. In 2015, countries such as Germany or Japan already
had a median age of over 46 years. Nevertheless, the number of old
people will increase to a great extent. In particular, the number of people
above the age of 80 years will more than double between 2015 and
2040. The number of elderly people (aged 65 or older) in the Philip-
pines grew from 1.94 million in 1990 to 4.61 million in 2015, which
is equal to an increase from 3.1% to 4.6% of the total population. The
UNDP predicts the share of elderly people to reach 8.2% by 2040. Conse-
quently, the median age in the Philippines rose from 19.3 in 1990 to
24.1 in 2015 and is predicted to reach a median age of 29.6 by 2040.
As mentioned above, the key drivers of the ageing of the population in
Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines relate to longer life expectancies
and declining birth/fertility rates. The birth rates in all three countries fell
dramatically after 1960. In Indonesia, this meant a fall from 44.56 births
per 1,000 citizens in 1960 to 25.81 in 1990 and—less dramatically—to
19.35 in 2015.
Malaysia’s crude birth rate fell from 42.69 in 1960 to 28.09 in 1990
and 17.09 in 2015. The birth rates of the Philippines declined to a lesser
extent. In 1960, the birth rate was at 44.32 births per 1,000 citizens, very
similar to that of Indonesia and Malaysia. It then fell to 33.02 in 1990
and 23.45 in 2015, higher than in Indonesia and Malaysia. The declining
birth rates are closely connected to the decline in the total fertility rates.
In Indonesia, this rate has dropped drastically from an average of 5.48
children per woman in 1970 to 2.39 children per woman in 2010–2015.
In Malaysia, too, the total fertility rate has declined enormously over the
last 55 years from an average of 6.45 children per woman in 1960 to
3.55 in 1990, and a comparatively very low 2.06 in 2015. The birth rate
in the Philippines also fell dramatically from 7.15 children per woman in
1960 to 4.32 in 1990 and to 2.96 in 2015. However, the total average
fertility rate in the Philippines is currently still significantly higher than in
Malaysia and Indonesia.
Not only the declining birth rates are leading to ageing societies, but
also the sharp rise in life expectancy due to better nutrition as well as
172 P. ZIEGENHAIN
medical and hygienic progress. Life expectancy in Indonesia increased

drastically from 1950 (38.8 years) to 1990 (62.67 for males and 65.67
for females) and 2015 (67.35 for males and 71.65 for females). It is
expected to be over 70 years for both sexes by 2040. A Malaysian born
in 1955, on average, reached an age of 55.4 years. This number climbed
to 64.9 in 1970. The average life expectancy at birth continued to rise
to over 70 years in 1990 and about 75 years in 2015 and is expected to
grow further to near 80 years in 2040. Somewhat lower, but still impres-
sive, is the rise in life expectancy in the Philippines. While the average
life expectancy at birth was only 58 years in 1960, the number for men
rose to 63.0 years and that for women to 68.6 in 1990. Life expectancy
continued to grow, and by 2015, it was 66.0 for men and 72.9 for
women. For 2040, the UNDP forecasts life expectancy to be 68.0 years
for men and 76.4 for women.
The ageing process in the three countries is clearly visible when one
looks at the ratio of people over 65 years of age compared to people
between 15 and 64 years of age. In Malaysia, the ratio in 1990 was
1:16.42, meaning that for every elderly person there were 16.42 persons
between the age of 15 and 64 years. This ratio dropped to 1: 11.81 in
2015 and will be 1: 5.35 by 2040. In absolute numbers, this means a rise
from 1.78 million elderly people in 2015 to 4.86 million by 2040. The
numbers for Indonesia are similar and only slightly lower. The ratio was
1:15.80 in 1990, fell to 1:12.98 in 2015 and for 2040 a ratio of 1:5.88
is predicted. In absolute numbers, the number of Indonesian older than
65 years will rise from 21.12 million in 2015 to 26.52 million by 2040.
Again, the Philippines have the slowest ageing process. The ratio of people
over 65 years compared to people between 15 and 64 years was 1:17.80
in 1990, 1:13.86 in 2015 and will be 1:8.00 in 2040.
As shown in Fig. 1, the shape of the population pyramids in these three
countries in 1990 is that of the classical developing countries, where the
largest group is made up of children and young people. In 2020, the
largest group is that of persons in working age providing a favourable
demographic profile for the labour market. The number of young people
is no longer as dominant as it used to be, and the number of elderly
people is not yet as high. In 2040, however, the pyramids in all three
countries will probably have more features of ageing societies.
Fig. 1 Population Pyramids, 1990, 2020, 2040 (Note Males are to the left
[black], females to the right [grey]. Source Computations by Richard Cincotta)
3 Reasons for the Demographic Developments

In the 1950s, all three countries were poor and underdeveloped. There
was a high rate of illiteracy of more than 80% and poorly developed
healthcare and education systems. Since then, all of them have steadily
developed and are now regarded as lower middle-income countries. In so
far, one of the explanatory factors of the rapid population growth is the
improvement of living conditions for the average citizen. This in turn has
led to higher rates of life expectancy. Furthermore, birth rates in all three
174 P. ZIEGENHAIN
countries sharply declined at the same time as living conditions improved.

What were the reasons for these developments? Malaysia and Indonesia
(and to a lesser extent the Philippines) have sustained a long period of
consistent economic growth since the 1970s, with average annual growth
rates of more than 5%. This economic progress has led to advances in
medical science, which resulted in improved healthcare systems and a
sharp decline of child mortality. As the countries became more devel-
oped, the demographic behaviour of the respective populations changed,
and in accordance with classic theories of demographic change (Gold-
stone, 2012: 19), the fertility rates declined and the number of elderly
people grew.
At the same time, new social norms relating to more Malaysian and
Indonesia women pursuing their education and career aspirations led to
later marriage and less children per woman (Sumra, 2016). In Malaysia,
it had been observed that the mean age at first marriage of women has
increased from 21.6 to 25.1 years between 1970 and 2000 (Mahari,
2011: 4). The opportunity for women to pursue higher education and
skills level empowers them to participate in the labour market. This
contributed to delay in their marriages (see also Hirschman & Bonaparte,
2012: 30f.). Another reason for the declining birth rates was the avail-
ability and acceptance of contraceptives in both countries. The Indonesia
government, coordinated by the National Family Planning Coordinating
Board (NFPCB), actively promotes and financially supports family plan-
ning since the late 1960s until today. The use of contraceptives and the
government promotion of them met with resistance from societal organi-
zations, including Muslim groups, only initially in both countries. In the
late 1960s, major Islamic groups in Indonesia expressed their unease with
family planning because they saw family planning as the replacement of
the will of God with the will of individuals in relation to procreation
(Shiffman, 2004: 29). However, the authoritarian government under
General Suharto made the family planning programme one of its major
development targets and used pressure as well as financial incentives to
counter any resistance. After intensive consultations with government offi-
cials, the most influential Islamic groups such as Muhammadiyah and
Nahdatul Ulama changed their point of view and supported the family
planning programmes (Shiffman, 2004: 30).
Among the three countries, the highest population growth took place
in the Philippines although the mortality rates declined at similar rates
to those in the other countries. Whereas in other Southeast Asian coun-

tries, population growth rates dropped substantially to below 2% a year,
the population growth rate in the Philippines declined much slower.
Many researchers argue that “the persistence of poverty in the Philip-
pines has to do largely with its inability to achieve —and sustain — an
income growth substantially higher than its population growth” (Bali-
casan, 2007). They complain about “the vicious cycle of high fertility
and poverty: high fertility rate prolongs poverty in households and poor
households contribute to high fertility rates” (Mapa et al., 2012: 15).
One reason for the comparatively high fertility rate in the Philippines is
“the teachings of the influential Philippine Catholic Church (no divorce,
contraception or abortion) and the active sexual life of young Filipinos.
Many women become pregnant at a very early age, soon after puberty”
(Boquet, 2017: 117). Besides the Vatican, the Philippines is the only
country in the world where divorce is not legal. “The use of government
money, taxpayers’ money to give out contraceptive pills is corruption”,
Archbishop Socrates Villegas was quoted (see Alave, 2012: n.p.).
The Catholic faith of most Filipinos, however, “does not exercise
a strong direct influence on fertility desires, but that it is a major
factor influencing population policy and programmes. Church opposition
to contraception has been a major factor in preventing the govern-
ment - both national and local - from committing funds for population
programmes. This in turn fosters a social climate that works against
coalescence around an explicit two-child norm” (Costello & Casterline,
2002: 533). The slow pace by which the total fertility rate has dropped
from 6.96 in 1960 to 3.30 in 2008, a measly 1.6% per year, “can be
attributed to a lack of concrete and proactive government policies on
population management aimed at accelerating the demographic transi-
tion” (Mapa et al., 2012: 12). In recent years, the last two Philippines
presidents supported an active family planning policy. Benigno “Noynoy”
Aquino (2010–2016) supported the ‘Responsible Parenthood and Repro-
ductive Health Act of 2012’ against bitter resistance from conservative
politicians and the Catholic Church. Current President Rodrigo Duterte
(since 2016) has stated to champion contraception to reduce poverty
during his term. He stated that he wants to reduce unwanted pregnancies
among poor Filipinos and that overpopulation is a threat to the country’s
economic development (Corrales, 2016). Both presidents followed their
own ethical beliefs and risked part of their popularity with citizens and
voters who followed the pro-life policy of the Catholic Church. On the
176 P. ZIEGENHAIN
other hand, their progressive approach on family planning brought both

support from reform-oriented people in the middle and lower classes.
Remarkably, there is a huge contrast between the Catholic Philip-
pines and the majority Muslim countries of Indonesia and Malaysia
which had no significant internal political debates about state-led family
programmes. In Malaysia, the Family Planning Act No. 42 was already
passed in 1966 and was widely approved by the population (Nai Peng Tey,
2007: 269). In the mid-1980s and 1990s, the government under Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohammad proclaimed a pro-natalist (and Islamist)
agenda to raise the number of Malaysians. He publicly stated that Malaysia
should have 70 million citizens by 2100 (Nai Peng Tey, 2007: 268). But
at this time, the use of contraceptives and active family planning policies
were already well-spread over Malaysia so that an enormous population
growth did not take place and the fertility rate continued to decrease.
In so far, the main reason for the demographic change in all three
countries is not culture, geography, climate or religion, but rather
improved living conditions. As in most other countries in the world,
economic modernization goes along with a relative decline in the agricul-
tural sector in terms of employment and percentage of the GDP (Martin
& Warr, 1993: 381), while the importance of the industrial and service
sectors is growing. Therefore, more people are moving to cities, where
living space is expensive. Since education is an increasingly important way
to get ahead, parents want to invest more in the education of their chil-
dren, which is also costly. Additionally, parents are gaining confidence
that nearly all their children will survive to adulthood, and thus, they
will not need more than two children. It is not only access to birth
control (although it is a contributing factor) but particularly the educa-
tional level of women that effectively limits the number of children they
bear (Goldstone, 2012: 19).
4 Political Implications of the Demographic Changes:

The Illusions of Demographic Momentum?
What has been the impact of the above-described population changes
on the domestic policies of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines? It
is remarkable how little awareness there is of the dramatic demographic
changes in all three countries. The general public, but also the political
elites, still regard their country as young and tend to ignore the decline
in fertility that has already occurred. Of course, there are demography
experts and scholars who are aware of the demographic changes, but
the public perception of an ageing society is not widespread in all three
countries. Why? First, the change in population is not so clearly visible.
As has been pointed out above, the major increases will be in the years
leading up to 2040. In Malaysia, for example, the percentage of people
above 65 years grew from 3.6% in 1990 to 5.8% in 2015. This is an
increase which is significant, but not really dramatic. The increase during
the next 25 years will draw more attention with a rise from 5.8% (2015)
to 12.9% by 2040. Second, the three populations are still growing due
to the demographic momentum (Goldstone, 2012: 20). Despite dramat-
ically declining birth rates, the population is still growing due to a large
proportion of its population being in its reproductive years. Therefore,
there will be a population increase in all of the three countries in the
years to come, which will presumably last until 2060 or 2070.
The executive director of the Philippine Commission on Population
(PopCom), Juan Antonio Perez III, stated in 2015: “We can say our
population is not yet aging. We are still a young population but we are on
the boundary of a demographic transition stage of an aging population”
(Chrisostomo, 2015: n.p.). Compared to other countries in Asia and the
rest of the world, Malaysia, Indonesia and particularly the Philippines
will still have relatively young populations in 2040. Therefore, Deloitte
Malaysia risk advisory leader Cheryl Khor stated that “compared to a
number of nations, the impact of ageing on Malaysia’s economic growth
is relatively gentle and will not really be felt until the 2050s. Our economy
will avoid many of the more challenging downsides of population ageing
for some time yet, although those challenges will eventually arrive here
too” (quoted in Dhesi, 2017: n.p.).
However, in the years to come, the consequences of an ageing popu-
lation will surely become a major policy concern for Indonesia, Malaysia
and the Philippines. Population ageing in lower middle-income countries,
such as Indonesia or the Philippines, brings potentially more challenges as
in the upper-middle-income economy of Malaysia. Nevertheless, in all the
three countries, two important national development goals will conflict:
How to sustain robust economic growth while at the same time provide
welfare to the growing number of old people? Achieving these two goals
simultaneously “will require new policies, most importantly policies that
encourage saving, and investment in health and education to improve
productivity” (Kohler & Behrman, 2017: 11).
178 P. ZIEGENHAIN
One of the socio-political challenges, however, which is likely to

affect all three countries, is the financial aspect of ageing. If their
populations continue to age, the proportion of elderly dependents will
increase. Accordingly, all three governments will have to address this chal-
lenge through their fiscal policies, including the provision of healthcare
spending. They will have to respond proactively, anticipating the rising
number of elderly people. It is already clear that financial pressures and
challenges of human capital (Sumra, 2016) will most probably emerge.
Malaysia and Indonesia in particular have to plan for the time after the
end of their demographic window of opportunity now. After 2050, both
countries are predicted to become “aged nations”, defined as nations
where post-working population (65 years and older) constitutes 14% or
more of the total population. For the Philippines, this will take some
more years, but in the second half of the twenty-first century they are
also predicted to obtain this status.
4.1 Pension Systems and Retirement Age

So far, all three countries have not yet sufficient welfare state capacities in
terms of pensions. Indonesia, for example, has not yet developed a general
pension system for old people. Except for public servants, including the
staff of police and army, who receive a modest state pension, the care for
old people is generally regarded as a family affair. In recent years, however,
the government has taken the first step towards a welfare state programme
that includes a mandatory universal pension programme for all citizens.
The Social Security Administration Body for Employment (BPJS Ketena-
gakerjaan) is responsible for dealing with the policy implementation of
this ambitious programme and it is difficult to predict whether BPJS will
be successful or not. Indonesia, as a recent study of the UN Population
Fund (UNPFA) concludes, “is not ready for population ageing. Ideally,
older people should enjoy life upon retirement. But the 2010 Population
Census show that half of them are still working, a large number of them
create their own employment or are working as unpaid workers. These
situations indicate a general lack of social protection for older people”
(UNPFA, 2014: 59).
There are not many Indonesians who get a pension. Currently, 53.1%
of males of 65 years and older are required to work (or have a busi-
ness) to have an income, and only 12.7% can rely on a pension or income
from social security. The numbers of Indonesian elderly women who have
to work is lower (23.7%), but so is the number of those who receive a

pension (7%). More than 50% of them (28.6% males) are dependent on
the money of their children/family (Arifin et al., 2012: 20).
Without much public outcry or political debates, the governments of
President Susilo Bambang Yudhyono (2004–2014) and President Joko
Widodo (since 2014) have increased the pension age of public servants.
In 2011, it was extended from 55 to 56 years without any opposi-
tion from the parties represented in the national legislature. In 2014,
the Ministry for the Empowerment of the State Apparatus developed a
proposal, which was later approved as Law No. 5/2014 by the president
and the legislature. This law increased the pension age for civil servants
to 58 years. Government Regulation No. 11/2017 on Civil Servant
Management regulated the pension age according to position: 58 years
for administrative officers and junior experts, 60 years for medium ranking
officials and 65 years for chief functional officers (Sekretariat Kabinet
Republik Indonesia, 2017). Again, there were no protests from any major
social group or political party against this government regulation. Polit-
ical experts explain that it is more attractive for public servants to work a
few years longer with their relatively high salaries than to retire and face
financial loss due to the relatively low pensions (Sikumbang, 2015).
Malaysia has also witnessed an increase of the minimum retirement
age for government servants. It was gradually raised from 55 to 56 in
2001, before further increasing to 58 in 2008 and to 60 in 2012. The
Minimum Retirement Age Act, which took effect in July 2013, increased
the retirement age for the private sector from 55 to 60. For the private
sector, Malaysia has a pension scheme called EPF (Employee Provident
Fund). The fund is managed by the national Ministry of Finance and
both employers (12% of payroll) and employees (11% of payroll) must
contribute to the fund. At the age of 60, any person paying into that
fund will get a monthly pension after retirement. However, this amount is
seen as very low. Out of over 14 million members in the EPF system, less
than seven million are active contributors and 72% of the members do not
meet the basic savings requirement at the age of 54 (Hussein, 2016). In
short, as DM Analytics Malaysia chief economist M. Abdul Khalid stated:
“Malaysia at present does not have a comprehensive policy to address the
issue of ageing population” (Toh, 2018: n.p.). Other Malaysian academics
agree and already proposed to raise the general pension age from 60 to
65 (Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2017: 35).
180 P. ZIEGENHAIN
In the Philippines, the retirement age is determined in Article 287 of

the Labour Code, which mentions 60 years as the earliest and 65 years as
the latest retirement age of employees when there is no retirement plan
or contract provision on the matter. Government employees are subject
to a mandatory retirement age of 65, while uniformed personnel such
as the Armed Forces are required to retire by 56 years old. Recently,
there has been a proposal to adjust the mandatory retirement age for
uniformed personnel from the current 56 to 60 years (Roxas, 2017), but
otherwise there have been no other proposals to increase the retirement
age. Compared to Malaysia and Indonesia, the retirement age is already
relatively high.
However, the above-mentioned PopCom director Juan Antonio Perez
III stated that the social protection systems have yet to catch up with
social conditions: “People are living longer but in poorer health and
socio-economic conditions. They are only partially reaping the benefits of
better health and social conditions” (Chrisostomo, 2015: n.p.). He also
demanded an action programme from the government to be developed
in the next ten years, since older persons need the government’s help as
they will be “the poorest members of the population because usually their
pensions are not enough for them” (Chrisostomo, 2015: n.p.).
The Population Institute of the University of the Philippines published
a study with the title “The Future Aging in the Philippines: Demographic
Trends, Human Capital and Health Status”, which concluded that “while
Filipinos are living longer, their sunset years are being increasingly trou-
bled by poor health and poor socioeconomic conditions” (Kritz, 2015:
n.p.). The authors warned the government that it has only 10 years to
find solutions before “the graying of the population starts to drag on
the country’s overall well-being” (Kritz, 2015). Other government offi-
cials added that the ageing population will also need larger amounts of
resources because of rising costs for the health services of an ageing
society (Chrisostomo, 2017).
In the current National Development Plan (2017–2022), which
was prepared by the National Economic and Development Authority
(NEDA), population policies play an important role. NEDA seeks
to reduce the fertility rate by decreasing unwanted pregnancies and
increasing the age of first births. However, no concrete measures are
proposed to meet the challenges of an ageing society.
In all three countries, the provision of adequate healthcare services
to an increasing number of older people with deteriorating health or
multiple illnesses will place a financial burden on the states’ budgets.

So far, very few measures have been planned by public or private actors
to meet the healthcare needs of the rapidly increasing number of older
persons.
The biggest financial challenge for pension systems in all three coun-
tries, however, is the lack of a universal national pension and healthcare
system, which can support those not working in the formal sector. For
public servants and those having worked in the formal private sector, there
are some pension schemes already in place, but for the large part of the
population, who work in the informal sector or as housewives, there are
no universal national pension systems. The traditional form of elderly care
by family members is still widespread in Southeast Asia. Respect for elderly
people is still higher in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines than in
many other parts of the world. However, these attitudes are expected
to decline in the near future as traditional family ties are loosened by
modernity, urbanization and increasing material wealth.
4.2 The Demographic Dividend and Youth Unemployment

All the three countries have enjoyed a relatively favourable demographic
environment in recent years, characterized by a high percentage of
working-age population, which was growing at a higher rate than the
overall population. Malaysia in particular, but also Indonesia and to a
lesser extent the Philippines, has been very successful in translating this
demographic window of opportunity into a sustained economic growth
path, poverty reduction and achievement in the non-income dimen-
sions (Nori, 2017). The so-called democratic dividend is thus a major
topic in all three countries. As it has a favourable ratio of productive
workers compared to child or elderly dependents in the population, it
is often seen as an ideal condition for economic growth. In the Philip-
pines, the latest National Development Plan gave one of the 21 chapters
the title “Reaching for the Demographic Dividend” and generally sees
great opportunities for the Philippine economy (National Economic and
Development Agency, 2017).
Several financial service companies also predict a rosy future for the
Philippines. Deloitte, for instance, writes that millions of new jobs will be
provided by the construction sector and by Business Process Outsourcing
(BPO) from the US (ibid., 2017). Standard & Poor’s stated that in the
Philippines “a growing and educated middle class would continue to
182 P. ZIEGENHAIN
be absorbed by a combination of overseas employment and a booming

outsourcing industry” (Agcaoili, 2016: n.p.).
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the working-
age population between the ages of 15 and 64 is expected to rise from
about 58 million people in 2010 to about 96 million in 2045, which
equals about 67.5% of the total population. This high amount of people
in a productive age will, according to the PSA, be on the one hand attrac-
tive for domestic and foreign investors as a big labour pool and on the
other hand stimulate the economy since it is a huge consumer market
(Kritz, 2015). Former Philippine senator Edgardo Angara is more crit-
ical, writing in 2015 that a “challenge for early-dividend countries […] is
to accelerate job creation to a rate faster than the growth of the working-
age population. For the Philippines, such an undertaking is big, but not
formidable—as more than a million Filipinos enter the labour force each
year, up to 4.3 million are unemployed, and close to 14 million are under-
employed, according to the July 2015 Labour Force Survey” (Angara,
2015: n.p.).
The National Economic and Development Agency also sees difficul-
ties and warned that the unemployment rate among 15–24 years olds is
more than twice the overall unemployment rate. In addition, the share
of youth not in education and not in employment is 22.1% of the total
young working population. This has serious implications because the
demographic dividend will largely depend on a productive working-age
population (National Economic and Development Agency, 2017: 205).
In Indonesia, the government is also relatively cautious concerning
the benefits of the demographic dividend. President Joko Widodo stated
in October 2017 that the demographic window of opportunity can be
a blessing, but it can also be a disaster if the quality of the country’s
human resources is not good enough to find good jobs (Yulianto, 2017).
Around 60% of the Indonesian workforce are only graduates of primary
and junior high schools. There are currently millions of (educated) unem-
ployed Indonesians who cannot be absorbed by the labour market (Van
der Schaar Investments, 2017) and the unemployment rate for people
between the age of 15 and 24 is far above the country’s national average.
Malaysia’s prospects regarding the demographic dividend are some-
what similar, but the country is in a different position. It has reached the
so-called sweet spot, which provides the optimal balance of demographic
costs and benefits. In addition, the population with ideal demographics is
still growing so that the country can look forward to a longer period of
favourable demographic dividends. Consequently, a study by the Research

Unit of CIMB wrote that for “Malaysia to seize the dividend, the time
is now. Given that Malaysia is currently undertaking structural reform
measures to elevate its GNI per capita to US $15,000 by 2020, the
potential to yield a high demographic dividend that coincides with higher
incomes can be substantial over the next two decades” (CIMB, 2015:
15).
However, the key to this endeavour is reducing youth unemploy-
ment. The World Bank estimated that Malaysia’s unemployed youth had
declined from a peak of 11.6% of the total labour force aged 15–24 years
in 2009 to 10.2% in 2012 (Teo, 2015). The Malaysian Employers’ Feder-
ation (MEF), on the other hand, argued that a smaller manpower pool
might not be the biggest problem in a country with an ageing popula-
tion because industries would opt for increased automation. “The types of
jobs needed in the future won’t be labour intensive,” said MEF executive
director Shamsuddin Bardan (quoted in Augustin, 2017: n.p.).
4.3 Migration and Urbanization

Migration movements will also affect the population policies in all three
countries. Currently, and as the UNDP predicted in the next 25 years as
well, Malaysia will be a destination for net immigration whereas Indonesia
and the Philippines will be migrant-sending countries. As a compara-
tively rich country, Malaysia attracts labour migrants from nearly all its
neighbouring countries, particularly Indonesia, but also the Philippines
and more distant countries such as Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, China
and India. Many of these migrants aim to live permanently there and/or
become Malaysian citizens as the socio-economic situation is regarded as
more favourable than in their countries of origin.
Indonesia and the Philippines, in contrast, will have a continued
outflow of (mostly relatively unskilled) labour migrants to neighbouring
countries and the Middle East. Official figures are difficult to obtain,
because a high number of migrants are not officially registered. However,
it is estimated that at least 3 million labour migrants and 2 million unreg-
istered immigrants (together around 15% of the total population) are
currently in Malaysia. The UN predicts that there will be increased migra-
tion to Malaysia in the future, which will add to its population growth
(Goerres et al., 2020).
184 P. ZIEGENHAIN
In the Philippines, more than 10 million citizens (or more than 10%
of the total population) are working outside of the country and are regis-
tered as Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). Nearly every family, especially
in rural areas, has family members abroad and, in the absence of a welfare
state, waits for their remittances. The Philippines are the third-biggest
remittance-receiving country (after India and China) with around 33
billion US-Dollars (World Bank, 2018), which is more than 10% of the
total GDP of the Philippines. In the Philippines, emigration is a common
way to escape poverty and is openly promoted as such by the govern-
ment and various private agencies. This is similar in Indonesia, but the
percentage of people and remittances is significantly lower. Only around
1% of the total GDP comes from remittances of Indonesians working
abroad. According to Minister of Manpower Hanif Dhakiri, the number
of these so-called TKI (Tenaga Kerja Indonesia) is around 9 million
people, 55% of whom are working in Malaysia. In contrast, only around
85,000 foreigners are working in Indonesia (Putera, 2018).
In so far, Indonesia’s contemporary population issues are very different
from those of the 1970 s and even the 1990 s, when high fertility rates
and population growth were regarded as pressing problems. Nowadays,
population ageing and migration have become increasingly important
emerging issues (Ananta & Arifin, 2014: 29). Much later than the
Filipinos, Indonesians have become highly mobile in their search for
income, and the labour market for them is no longer confined to their
districts or provinces, but has expanded to the entire world (Ananta &
Arifin, 2014: 39).
Another dramatic population trend in Indonesia is rapid urbanization.
In 1990, around 69.4% of the Indonesians lived on the countryside and
only 30.6% in cities with more than 100,000 citizens. Only 25 years later,
in 2015, the urban population has become the majority (with 54.5%).
For the future, the UN projected that by 2050 two-thirds of Indone-
sia’s population will live in urban areas. Similar developments have taken
place in the Philippines over the last 50 years. With 337 inhabitants per
square kilometre in 2013, the country is among the ones with most pres-
sure on land resources worldwide (Boquet, 2017: 118). Metro Manila is
regarded by many to be the most densely populated urban area in the
world (Deloitte, 2017). Urbanization has also considerably transformed
the Malaysian population over the last 50 years. In 1960, only 26.6% of
Malaysians lived in urban areas and 73.4% in the countryside. By 2015,
the living situation has reversed, with nearly 75% of the Malaysians living
in cities.
For the respective national economies, the above-described processes
constitute a positive development, as urbanization and industrializa-
tion are necessary to grow into the ranks of a middle-income country
(Van der Schaar Investments, 2017). However, urbanization also creates
many problems and raises new challenges for political decision-makers.
Currently, Malaysian and even more so Indonesian and Philippine cities
are already plagued with problems such as air pollution, smog, noise, lack
of access to safe water, inadequate sewer systems, limited living space and
lack of infrastructure. Limited public transport possibilities and a huge
rise in private car ownership in recent years led to frequent traffic collapses
and regularly to huge traffic jams in Southeast Asia’s cities. The capitals
of Indonesia and the Philippines, Jakarta and Manila, belong to the most
congested cities worldwide, causing enormous economic damage. Due to
time loss and higher transport costs, these cities are estimated to account
for 2–5% of the national GDP (Dancel, 2017). The expected substan-
tial rise in urban population over the next 25 years, especially among the
urban poor, will compound these problems.
4.4 Regional, Ethnic and Religious Differences

of Population Growth
Another important issue for population policies in Indonesia, Malaysia
and the Philippines is the fact that there are remarkable regional differ-
ences in terms of demography in all three countries. Additionally, all three
countries have significant variations concerning the fertility rates of certain
ethnic and religious population groups, which has an impact on popula-
tion policies (see also Skirbekk and Navarro, this volume). A general trend
is that more rural and less developed parts have higher birth rates than
urban and richer parts of the country. In Indonesia, the Eastern provinces
of East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, North Maluku and West Papua have the
highest average fertility rates of more than 3 children per woman. All of
them belong to the provinces with the highest incidents of poverty and
underdevelopment. Not surprisingly, the lowest birth rates can be found
in the urban (and rather developed) provinces of Jakarta and Yogyakarta
as well as in the provinces of East and Central Java, which have population
sizes of more than 30 million people, but can be rated as rather well-
developed. Yogyakarta, Central and East Java are also the only provinces
186 P. ZIEGENHAIN
in which people older than 65 make up more than 10% of the population
(UNPFA, 2014: 25).
As Indonesia, the Philippines also have the highest fertility rates among
the provinces with the poorest people. In general, the very high spatial
diversity in the Philippines is quite remarkable (Balicasan, 2007). Metro
Manila’s HD for 2016 is comparable to that of Poland or the Baltic States,
whereas that of the Bangsamoro area in West Mindanao is comparable
to Eritrea and Niger. The two Philippines regions have also the lowest
and the highest total fertility rate in the country, with an average of
2.3 children per woman in the National Capital Region and 4.2 in the
Bangsamoro province.
In the latest National Development Plan, it can also be seen that the
level of education and wealth of women is a decisive variable for the
number of children. While Filipinas with no or only elementary educa-
tion on average have 3.8 or 4.6 children, those with a college degree or
higher have on average only 2.1 children. The lowest education quintile
of the Philippine women gets an average of 5.2 children, whereas this
number is only 1.7 among the highest quintile (National Economic and
Development Authority, 2017: 203).
Malaysia also has some remarkable regional differences in birth rates.
The birth rates in the rural and rather traditional Islamic states of Kelantan
and Terengganu at the East coast of Peninsular Malaysia are significantly
higher than in the rest of the country, whereas the birth rate on Penang
Island, a rather urban state with a high percentage of Chinese population,
is the lowest in all states. The birth rate in the rural and less developed
East Malaysian states Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo Island, with a lower
percentage of Islamic population, is also remarkably low.
What makes Malaysia a special case in terms of population policies
is the sensitive issue of race and religion in the country. The Malays,
who are considered indigenous to Malaysia and have Islam as their reli-
gion, were only a very narrow majority compared to other ethnic groups.
But since the Malays had a much higher fertility rate than the other
ethnic groups, population growth has resulted in significant changes in
the ethnic composition of Malaysia. This trend will continue over the next
25 years. The proportion of Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians is
predicted to shrink as their birth rates are significantly lower than those
of the Malay Muslims. The fertility rates of the latter have remained rela-
tively high due to pro-natalist cultural values and, to some extent, the
traditional role of women as housewives and mothers in traditional Islamic
lifestyle. Another reason is that the Muslim-Malay are living in rather rural
areas and have less income than the other ethnic groups (Zin, 2013: 236,
238). Particularly, the Chinese community in Malaysia (which is gener-
ally more urban, wealthy and educated than other ethnic groups) but
also other ethnic and religious minorities in Malaysia fear that they will
be further marginalized economically and politically due to the growing
Malay-Muslim birth rates.
Another major issue of political demography in Malaysia is the claim
that the national government, which is dominated by Muslim-Malays,
is actively encouraging the immigration of Muslims from other coun-
tries (including Indonesia and the Philippines) in order to improve the
ratio of bumiputera towards other ethnic groups. Particularly, in the East
Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, which historically did not have
a Muslim-Malay majority, the so-called Project IC, which allegedly gave
identity cards to several hundred thousands of “illegal” Muslim immi-
grants, has been debated intensively (Sadiq, 2005), but until 2018 has
not been resolved completely. Not only in Malaysia, but also in Indonesia
and the Philippines, the issue of regional, ethnic and religious differences
of demographic developments will remain a political topic in the years
to come. All three countries have very heterogeneous populations and
their respective demographic behaviour will have an impact on domestic
politics, internal conflicts and economic transformations. Thus, political
demography, as defined by Kaufmann and Toft (2012: 3) and Vanhuysse
and Goerres (this volume), will be of utmost importance for the assess-
ment and analysis of socio-economic and political developments in these
countries.
5 Conclusion: The Risk of Premature Ageing

Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are typical examples of a demo-
graphic transition. In this process, “societies move from having a combi-
nation of low life expectancy and high fertility to the opposite condition
with high life expectancy and low fertility” (Goldstone, 2012: 18).
Whereas wealthier countries have completed their demographic transi-
tion, the three Southeast Asian countries are still medium-developed
and thus currently still in the process of their respective demographic
transitions. The Philippines have just entered the early stage of the demo-
graphic window of opportunity that promises high economic growth
rates, whereas Indonesia is already a bit longer in the era of demographic
188 P. ZIEGENHAIN
dividend. Malaysia is feeling the ageing of society the most of the three
countries. The demographic change towards an ageing population with a
significant percentage of elderly people will be a huge challenge for all of
the three countries. The existing pension and healthcare systems are not
fitting the increasing demand in future. At least two out of the three coun-
tries have reacted and increased the retirement age for public servants.
This is, however, a small step compared to other, mostly highly unpop-
ular measures, which the respective governments have to implement in
order to deal with the multifaceted problems of an ageing population.
The major problem for emerging economies such as Indonesia or the
Philippines—which have not yet reached a middle-income country status
and where poverty is still widespread—could be that economic growth
stalls before they transition into high-income status. Getting old before
getting rich is one the biggest medium-term structural challenges for
developing countries in Asia and other parts of the world. The premature
ageing of their respective populations might inhibit their ability to join the
group of high-income developed countries (Lee, 2017). Indonesia and
the Philippines, but to a lesser extent also Malaysia, thus face the potential
problem that they cannot reap the benefits of the demographic dividend
due to problems in their labour markets. Migration within Southeast
Asia is increasing, but it is mainly unskilled labour which is looking for
job opportunities across borders. Regional imbalances also hamper the
chances of the three Southeast Asian countries to become rich before the
ageing process will set in. Rural and underdeveloped regions contrast with
some developed parts of the respective countries, which already exhibit a
demographic behaviour similar to fully developed economies.
When looking at the challenges facing the three countries, one has
to be aware that the demographic transition has taken place within the
lifetime of only one or two generations. The population of all the three
countries more than tripled in the second half of the twentieth century
and will further grow until the end of the first half of the twenty-first
century. At the same time, Southeast Asia has transformed from one of
the poorest regions in the world in the 1950 s (and in some parts into
the 1980 s) to a quite developed region with an impressive increase of life
expectancy, income and level of education over the last 50 years.
Therefore, the demographic change went hand in hand with a positive
economic development. It is thus a challenging task for the governments
of the three countries to manage the necessary adjustments for the soci-
etal transformation into ageing societies at a time when further economic
progress will be more difficult to achieve and societal demands (e.g. on a

welfare state, a national pension system or an affordable state-sponsored
healthcare system) will continue to grow. Due to its advanced ageing
process, Malaysia will be the first of the three countries to deal with
a full-fledged ageing society, but at the same time it is also by far the
most developed and smallest of the three countries. For Indonesia and
the Philippines, these problems are likely to be greater, but they will have
more time to adjust.
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holder.
CHAPTER 8
The Oldest Societies in Asia: The Politics

of Ageing in South Korea and Japan
Axel Klein and Hannes Mosler
1 General Demographic Development

Japan and South Korea (hereafter: Korea) both display typical demo-
graphic features of highly industrialized nations. The percentage of the
young population (age group 0–14) is similarly low (2019: Japan: 12.1%,
Korea: 14%), population ageing has been a well-known and well-predicted
characteristic of both societies, and most people live in urban areas (2019:
Japan: 91.7%, Korea: 81.4%) (UNPD, 2020) creating a high population
density there while leaving rural regions to suffer from the effects of
depopulation (cf. Table 1).
Most of the demographic differences between the two countries indi-
cate a time lag with Korea following in Japan’s footsteps, a development
that the Korean War (1950–1953) and the belated economic growth in
South Korea appear to explain to a large extent. The speed of Korea’s
A. Klein (B) · H. Mosler

Department of Political Science and the Institute of East Asian Studies,
e-mail: alex.klein@uni-due.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_8
196 A. KLEIN AND H. MOSLER
Table 1 Selected demographic data on Japan and Korea (2019)
Japan Korea
Population size 126,166,948 51,225,320

% of 0–14 year olds 12.1 12.7
% of 15–64 year olds 59.5 72.2
% of 65+ year olds 28.4 15.0
% of 75+ year olds 14.7 6.4
ratio of 65+ to 15–64 year olds 2.3 4.8
Population density relative to habitable land area 347 514
Sources COJ (2020), SBJ (2020), and UNPD (2020)
“catching-up” is partly determined by the difference in fertility between

both countries. While Japan’s total fertility rate (TFR) belongs to the
lowest worldwide (2019: 1.36), Korea not only became the first OECD
country to fall below 1 in 2018 (0.97) but the country saw its TFR
decrease even further in 2019 (0.92) (COJ, 2020: 10).
As Table 1 shows, the share of elderly people (65 years and older) in
Korea (2019: 15%) is still lower than in Japan (2019: 28.4%), but growing
steadily and expected to rise by a more than twofold increase predicted
for the next three decades. The same is true for the working-age popu-
lation (15–64 year olds), which in South Korea comprises a large share
(2019: 72.2%), particularly when compared to Japan (59.5%), which is
situated on the lower end of the OECD spectrum. However, once the
“baby boomer” generation (1968–1974) in Korea retires (a process that
Japan was undergoing from 2007 to 2011), the share of elderly people
will increase considerably (UNPD, 2020).
The development of the “old-age dependency ratio” (OADR)1 has
shown a similar “trailing” of Korean development. In 1990, both coun-
tries featured the same OADR of about 43.5. While Japan’s ratio,
however, began its rise from there on until it reached 68.3 in 2019,
Korea’s OADR was still on the decline and continued to fall until 2014
1 The OADR “is the ratio of dependents--people younger than 15 or older than 64--to
the working-age population--those ages 15-64.” Data show the proportion of depen-
dents per 100 working-age population (Data taken from: https://data.worldbank.org/
indicator/SP.POP.DPND?locations=JP-KR. Accessed 19 September 2020). The World
Bank calculated the values based on data of United Nations Population Division’s World
Population Prospects: 2019 Revision.
8 THE OLDEST SOCIETIES IN ASIA … 197
(36.2) before it then followed Japan’s trend and increased to 38.5 in 2019
(Worldbank, 2020). Korea’s ratio is projected to surge in the coming
decades to more than 50 (Schwekendiek, 2016).
Longevity contributes considerably to this effect. Life expectancy at
birth quickly increased in Korea from 55.4 years in 1960 to 82.6 years
in 2018, positioning the nation in the middle of all OECD countries,
but the rate by which life expectancy has been growing over the last
decades is remarkably high in comparison with other OECD countries.
Korea has continuously closed the gap to Japan from twelve years in
1960 to less than two in 2018 (Japan: 84.2 years).2 Research by the
Imperial College London even projects that Korea will “take Japan’s life
expectancy crown”, which is forecasted with 85.7 years in 2030, while
the average for South Koreans is expected to be 87.4 years at that time
(Harris 2017: n.p.).
In terms of overall population growth, a similar trailing effect could
develop, but in 2019 both countries were still moving in different direc-
tions (cf. Fig. 1). Japan’s population had already begun to shrink in 2011,
which, in 2019, had resulted in almost two million fewer Japanese than
in 2010 (COJ, 2020). This is also reflected in the age structure graph for
2020 with a thinned-out bottom—a mismatch that will have exacerbated
even more over the next two decades. The National Institute of Popula-
tion Research (IPSS, 2017b) published forecasts that predict a decrease
in the number of people to 100 million by 2053.
In comparison, Korea’s population is still growing, although the
looming stagnation has already become apparent. After having experi-
enced a twofold increase from 20 million to 42 million between 1949
(right after the Republic’s establishment) and 1990, Korea’s population
had increased by almost another ten million by 2017. Predictions for
2020 demonstrate a disproportionate middle-aged bulge with a simulta-
neous decrease in the youth population—a trend that will continue over
the next twenty years. That is why the UN Population Division expects
that negative growth rates in Japan and Korea will be similar around
2050, as will the age structures of both populations.
2 World Bank at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=

JP-KR. Accessed 19 September 2020.
Fig. 1 Population pyramids, Japan and Korea (Note Males are to the left
2 Political Institutions
Japan and Korea are parliamentary democracies scoring similarly to Euro-
pean states, for example, on the Polity IV Project scale of country regimes
(CSP, 2016). The literature on both political systems also strongly
suggests that Japan and Korea do indeed belong to the category of well-
established democracies in free-market OECD countries (Choi, 2012; Kil
& Moon, 2010; Klein, 2005; Krauss & Pekkanen, 2011; Mosler et al.,
2018; Schoppa, 2011; Yang, 2001).
In both countries, political institutions are receptive to demands from
society originating out of demographic change. They were occasionally
altered to address changes in the countries’ populations, albeit in different
ways. While in Japan only citizenship provides residents with voting
rights, in Korea non-citizen foreign residents holding a certain visa were
granted voting rights at the local and regional levels since 2005. Thus,
Korea is the only country in Asia to have introduced enfranchisement
of foreigners (cf. Mosler & Pedroza, 2016; Pedroza & Mosler, 2017).
Although the number of foreign-born residents exercising their voting

right is steadily increasing, by 2020 it has not yet reached a level that
would incentivize all political parties to address this group of voters in
party platforms. Still, in 2004, at least the leftist-progressive Democratic
Labor Party (DLP) included respective items in their election pledge,
and in 2012, other major political parties started to incorporate related
issues and policy plans into their programmes. Furthermore, in the light
of growing numbers of incoming foreigners and concomitant needs as
well as social conflicts, it is predictable for the near future that parties will
direct substantial attention to issues related to foreign residents, refugees
and asylum-seekers.
Japan, on the other hand, saw a different kind of institutional change.
All major Japanese parties agreed in 2007 to include the nation’s 2.4
million 18 and 19 year olds in the electorate for national elections (in
Korea, the voting age is 19 years). The government’s explanation for
this change may not comprehensively reflect the set of motives that led
the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan’s dominant party, which has
no history of appealing to the young in any prominent way, to initiate
and implement this institutional change.3 However, the main reason
presented by all parties involved in the decision was the granting of
more political weight to the shrinking younger generations who have to
shoulder the burden of an aged society.
3 Demographic Change, Political Power

& Voter Mobilization and Turnout
Election results in Japan show a mixed picture regarding the acceptance
of this new opportunity. In the 2017 General Election, when overall voter
turnout reached 53.68%, 47.87% of the 18 year olds and 33.25% of the
19 year olds cast their ballot. In other words, both groups showed less
interest in their newly given voting right than the average population.
Other cohorts are larger and also mobilized to a higher degree. Polit-
ical parties in Japan would clearly find more incentives to address the
group of those in the midst of their life (35–54) and the (soon-to-be)
3 Lowering the voting age was very much the result of a political deal struck in 2007
that won the opposition’s approval to a bill regulating a public referendum on constitu-
tional reform. In exchange, the LDP agreed to the opposition’s demand to also allow 18-
and 19-year olds to vote.
pensioners (60–74). In Korea, on the other hand, cohorts between 20

and 59 are of roughly equal size and retirees make up a smaller portion
of the population (Fig. 2).
Over the last decades, there has been a positive correlation (with very
few exceptions) in both countries between age and turnout that levels
off at 60+ in Korea and 70+ in Japan (cf. Figs. 3 and 4). One part of an
explanation could be that voting is a learned experience, which means that
older voters are more likely to turn up at the polling stations than younger
ones (cf. Goerres & Vanhuysse, 2012: 1). With regard to political influ-
ence of age groups, especially the 18/19–29 year olds seem to renounce
their potential position in both countries. Consequently, political parties
appealing to younger voters seem to fish in more difficult waters.
While there is not yet enough research in Japan to understand the
partisan positions of young voters, preferences of age cohorts in Korea
have been analysed since the beginning of the 1990s. Whereas the
majority of voters from their 20s to their 40s tend to vote liberal, the
majority of voters from their 50s upwards traditionally tend to vote
conservative (cf. Shin, 2001: 172–179). As a result of the ageing society,
12 000.000
10 000.000
8 000.000
6 000.000
4 000.000
2 000.000
0.000
0-4
5-9
10-14
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
45-49
50-54
55-59
60-64
65-69
70-74
75-79
80-84
85-89
90-94
95-99
100+
Japan Republic of Korea
Fig. 2 Population by age (persons) (Source United Nations, Department of

Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division [2017]. World Population
Prospects: The 2017 Revision, custom data acquired via website, http://www.
un.org/en/development/desa/population)
100.0
90.0
80.0
70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
1992 1997 2002 2007 2012 2017
19-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 over 60
Fig. 3 Voter turnout by age in the Republic of Korea (presidential elections, in

percentage) (Source National Election Committee, Republic of Korea)
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2003 2005 2009 2012 2014 2017
19-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-
Fig. 4 Voter turnout by age in Japan (general elections, in percentage) (Source

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications [Japan])
the number of eligible voters from their 20s to their 40s has been
shrinking while the voters from their 50s upwards grew over the last
two decades turning the relation between the oldest and youngest age
cohort upside down. As a logical consequence, older citizens’ interests
will increasingly affect policy decisions (cf. Kim, 2004).
Still, more decisive factors regarding voting outcomes in Korea are
related to the regional distribution of voters. Regional sentiments or
regionalism has been a pervasive factor in elections since the late 1980s
and still is one of the major factors deciding elections. Many voters chose
a candidate, party or camp based on their hometown’s province. People
living in the south-eastern region of Yŏngnam tend to vote conserva-
tively while those who reside in the south-western region of Honam vote
liberally.
What is more, the number of inhabitants of the region of Yŏngnam
is more than 2.5 times larger than the Honam population. This naturally
translates into respective proportions of election districts for the National
Assembly—there are more than twice as many districts of the Yŏngnam
region (68) compared to the Honam region (31) (cf. Jung, 2015; Kang,
2015: 131). This regionalism, however, is not an expression of historically
grown and/or based on religion, ethnicity or other typical cleavages, but
is the artificial outcome of economic discrimination and political mobiliza-
tion. This, in turn, provides the conservatives with a significant advantage,
because they have their stronghold in the far more populous Yŏngnam
region.
This advantage has been incrementally alleviated since the 1990s by the
fact that the proportion of liberal candidates elected in Yŏngnam is higher
than that of conservative candidates elected in Honam. In addition, while
the recent years showed a somewhat decreasing impact of regionalism on
voter behaviour, the nation is still far from a “normalization” of these
peculiar voting patterns, even though lately age generation emerged as
yet another significant factor (Kim & Park, 2018; Mosler, 2017: also see
Goerres & Vanhuysse, 2012).
4 Public Policies of Population Ageing

Political debates on redistributive public policies in both countries have
been taking place against different demographic and political backdrops.
For reasons explained above, the economic burden that social systems
put on state budgets is considerably smaller in Korea than in Japan. In
addition, Korea’s general gross government debt in 2017 stood at 39.6%

of the country’s GDP while Japanese governments had driven their state
debt to 250.4%, by far the highest figure among all OECD countries.
There are more differences. In 2017, Korea’s social security spending
stood at the lower end (11.1% of GDP) compared to European free-
market democracies. Japan’s expenditure, however, reached 23.6% of the
country’s GDP, similar to many European countries with considerably
higher tax revenues (MoFJ, 2020). Even though social security expen-
diture in Japan is mainly funded by social insurance contributions, the
Japanese Ministry of Finance commented on the situation in Japan: “This
means that its fiscal balance is in a dire position” (MoFJ, 2017).
The cost of social security in Japan almost doubled from Yen 66.2 tril-
lion in 1990 to Yen 123.7 trillion in 2020. The social security budget
consumed 34.9% of the national budget in 2020, an increase from 17.5%
in 1990 (MoFJ, 2020). Population ageing was the major factor behind
the growth of expenditures in the fields of pension, health and long-
term care. Especially, the increasing age group 75 and older has been
contributing heavily to social welfare costs. According to data published
by the Ministry of Finance in Japan (MoFJ, 2020), the state covered
average costs per citizen in the age cohort 65–74 of Yen 14,000 annu-
ally for long-term care, while the same amount for citizens 75 and older
amounted to Yen 137,000. The state share for medical care was Yen
81,000/person/year for the 65–74 cohort and Yen 335,000 for those
75 and older (data for 2017) (MoFJ, 2020).
Korea, too, increased its budget for social welfare from Kwn 129.5 tril-
lion to Kwn 146.2 trillion, which is about one-third (34.1%) of the total
2018 budget of Kwn 429 trillion, and amounts to an increase of 12.9% in
budget. The largest items related to population ageing are public pensions
(Kwn 47.8 trillion), housing (Kwn 23.8 trillion), elderly and youth (Kwn
12 trillion), and basic social security benefits (Kwn 11.3 trillion) (No,
2017).
Clearly, with a growing share of senior citizens, the ability of the
pension and health systems to sustain a satisfying standard of living at low
costs is of high political significance. In addition, both countries reacted
to the growing share of senior citizens and the weakening capacity and
willingness of family members, especially women, to act as caregivers by
introducing public long-term care insurance (Japan: 2000, South Korea:
2008). It is in these public policy fields that political parties immediately
feel negative reactions of voters to measures that reduce social welfare

benefits or raise costs like co-payments.
On the other end of the age distribution, however, younger voters
are not only fewer in number but remain comparatively disinterested and
unorganized in political matters. What makes their political influence even
smaller than in many European countries is the absence or weakness of
civil society organizations and other non-party actors that can function as
stakeholders such as welfare organizations, labour unions or socially active
religious organizations. Still, low fertility rates have created economic and
social pressure on policymakers to facilitate having children. In both coun-
tries, measures directly related to pregnancy, birth, childcare and other
forms of child support have been discussed and sometimes implemented.
A look at the composition of the state budgets for social welfare
shows that only comparatively small percentages have been designated for
child support. In Japan, Yen 35.9 trillion of the national budget for the
fiscal year 2020 was allocated to social security. These resources comple-
mented another Yen 84.4 trillion from insurance contributions and other
sources to make up a total budget for social security of Yen 123.7 trillion.
Of those, only 12.6% were designated as child support (childcare, child
allowance etc.) (MoF, 2020).
For similar reasons, in Korea, childbirth and child-rearing are increas-
ingly supported by the government, too. The 2018 budget saw a 13.7%
increase in financial support for child-rearing, family and women in
comparison with 2017. Child-rearing allowances payment was increased
so that a parent can receive 80% of her/his salary for the first three
months of parental leave, and a bonus system for fathers took effect as of
July 2018 which amounts to a sum of up to Kwn 2 million (Ministry of
Strategy and Finance 2018: 66). Starting from September 2018, another
form of child allowance is a monthly payment of Kwn 100,000 to lowest
income families with children of up to five years of age. In addition,
one-parent families’ child allowance was raised from Kwn 120,000 to
Kwn 130,000 per month (Ministry of Strategy and Finance, 2018: 96).
Also, the budget for elderly and youth was enlarged by 15%. The largest
increases among the social welfare items were in employment at 30.4%
and general social security by 35.9% (Ministry of Strategy and Finance,
2018: 104).
While the public financial burden of demographic change is still
comparatively small in Korea, Japanese governments have been looking
for ways to fight an increasing gap in state budgets triggered by popu-

lation ageing (MoFJ, 2017, see for a comparative analysis of Japan,
Germany and Italy Sciubbba 2012). Since 1989, when a 3% consumption
tax was introduced, most prime ministers were confronted with demands
of their financial bureaucracy to increase this tax and use the revenue for
social welfare services. With tax increases being unpopular and Japan’s
industry continuously pointing at the risk a tax increase could pose for
the country’s economy, the issue was often taken off the political agenda
again. Prime Minister Abe Shinzô postponed the increase from 8 to
10% two times (in 2014 and 2016, Klein & McLaughlin, 2018: 56–57),
finally implementing it in October 2019, thus considerably increasing tax
revenues (cf. MoFJ, 2020).
In 2017, Abe also announced a change in the designated use of the
consumption tax revenue by dedicating a share of it to lowering the cost
of education for families. By doing so, he addressed an important issue
that has kept young adults (in both countries) from having (more) chil-
dren. Surveys reliably show that the financial burden of an education
system that promises better jobs mostly to those who attend expensive
private schools and universities works as impediment for young couples.
Educating children in Korea and Japan is an economic burden and, as
Holthus and Klein (2010) suggest, produces an ‘educational spiral’ that
has an increasingly negative effect on fertility.4 As a consequence, the
economic costs for children in both countries vary considerably according
to—above all—the educational institutions attended. Based on the data
collected by Benesse, a Tokyo-based private institute for social research,
costs for child-rearing (from birth to the age of 22) amount to some-
where between Yen 26 million to Yen 41 million (Benesse, 2015). In
Korea, recent calculations estimate an average amount of close to Kwn
400 million to raise an infant up to the age of around 20 years (Chi &
Yu, 2017; Song, 2018).5
Efforts were made by non-conservative governments in both countries
to support young (potential) parents. During the little over three years
that the LDP was replaced as ruling party by the Democratic Party of
4 Holthus and Klein argue that education-related social processes reinforce each other
in their impact on fertility.
5 To offer some comparison: the average annual wage (2019) in Japan was Yen 4.4
million; in Korea, it was Kwn 41.8 million (https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSe
tCode=AV_AN_WAGE. Accessed 19 September 2020).
Japan in 2009, a substantial increase in child allowance was proposed to

support families with children. The DPJ hoped that giving more money
to families would help them pay for education and thus encourage them
to have more children. In the end, the policy had only been implemented
halfway when the LDP regained power and shelved the increase. In Korea,
the Moon administration introduced a monthly child allowance of Kwn
100,000 per offspring up to the age of five. In addition, a set of support
measures was created to address marriage, childbirth and childcare. Public
housing for newly wedded couples was to be increased by 30,000 house-
holds and favourable options to be provided when purchasing or renting
houses or when taking out loans. Moreover, not only were medical centres
for childbirth to be extended, but also an additional 150–450 different
public kindergarten facilities to be newly created (Ministry of Strategy
and Finance Ministry of Strategy and Finance, 2018: 30).
In Japan and Korea, women who stopped working after giving birth
created the typical M-shaped curve of female paid employment.6 This
phenomenon can be observed in both countries, although the labour
force participation rate of Japanese women is considerably higher than
that of Korean females. In both countries, however, the ‘dint’ has flat-
tened continuously over the last decades. In 2017, 82.1% of Japanese
women of the age cohort 25–29 were employed. For the next two cohorts
(30–34 and 35–39), the share does not decrease further than 75.2% and
73.4%, respectively, returning to 79.4% for the 45–49 year old (GoJ,
2020). In Korea, the labour force participation rate of women as of 2016
stood at 58.4%, even though in international comparison this level is still
under the OECD average of 63.6% (Statistics Korea, 2018a).
These figures do not say anything about the type and quality of
employment mothers can find after returning to the job market. As
many studies showed, career options are drastically reduced, and many
women work part-time and/or as irregulars with less social security and
job protection than regular full-time employees. What is more, pressure
from employers, general working conditions and a lack of daycare facili-
ties impede efforts made by many women to reconcile paid employment
with child-rearing. In both countries, women are generally expected to
6 In many countries, graphs illustrating female employment rates by age group resemble
the letter “M” because they show high percentages for women gainfully employed in the
years after graduation from school/university and again from their late 30 s on. In between
those years, however, fewer women are employed, mostly because of child-rearing.
take responsibility for raising their children and household work, even
though numbers of housemen and spouses who take longer child-rearing
leaves from work are slowly rising. Still, giving care is constructed to be
a female chore. Work-life balance has been declared a political goal by
governments in both countries but remains unattainable to a large part
for female and male employees (for Japan, cf. Aronsson, 2014; for Korea
cf. Park, 2019)
5 Immigration
Given the demographic development and budget restraints described
so far, the immigration of younger working populations seems like a
promising alternative solution to the challenges faced by both societies.
Like in other advanced economies, however, there are various factors
that keep governments from simply allowing the needed labour force to
immigrate. One major factor is that while highly qualified workers are
usually welcome in specified sectors, the ruling parties assume there is
little enthusiasm among voters for substantial labour immigration from
abroad, resulting in ‘stealth policies’ that open doors for (mostly) tempo-
rary foreign-born workers under the label of, for example, ‘internship
programs’. Japan has proven more restrictive in this field than Korea.
In migration research, Japan and Korea belong to the group of ‘new
immigration countries’ (Hollifield et al., 2014). Both countries have
seen a steady increase in foreign-born immigrants and mixed (multi-
cultural) families since 1990, albeit to different degrees. In Japan, the
number of registered foreigners more than doubled between 1990 and
2015 from one to more than two million, equal to a share of 1.78%
of Japan’s total population (IPSS, 2017a). In Korea, there was a 20-
fold leap from about 50,000 foreigners in 1990 to more than 2 million
students, blue and white-collar workers, and wives7 in 2016. Altogether,
2.3 million foreigners are registered as living in Korea, a share of 4.5% of
the country’s total population (KOSIS).
Less than demographic developments, it was the labour-intensive
industries in both countries that created pressure on governments to
allow for immigration. With growing income and higher education levels,
7 These are women mostly from Southeast Asian countries who marry farmers in the
South Korean countryside who have difficulties to find domestic women who are willing
to work in agriculture.
fewer Japanese and Koreans needed to accept physically demanding and

dangerous jobs, resulting in labour shortage in the respective industries
including agriculture. With East Asia having turned into a migration
region in the 1980s (Chiavacci, 2014), governments in both countries
seemed to have a new option to tackle their respective labour shortages.
In Japan, however, many voters have associated low-skilled labour
immigration with potential social tensions, wealth gaps and a loss of public
safety (Tajiri, 2017: 20).8 Politicians closer to industry interests, however,
pushed pro-immigration initiatives. The relevant ministries fought for
their respective (sometimes conflicting) agendas. Consequently, the polit-
ical debate on immigration over the last three decades has been charac-
terized by phases of different intensities and a number of different policy
approaches, most of which resulted in backdoor immigration as a compro-
mise, while the issue was mostly ignored in the public debate. As a result,
by 2020, Japan had not developed any kind of (social) integration policy
but continued to open its doors to immigration.
In 2016, Prime Minister Abe had declared in the Japanese Parliament
that his LDP government “is in no way thinking about immigration poli-
cies” (Tajiri, 2017: 19), even though measures leading to similar results
had been in place for years. One such measure had been ‘educational visas’
that created a considerable increase in applications of potential language
students who would rather work and not attend lessons. Liu-Farrer
referred to this as “disguised labor migration”.9 Another measure was
the government’s 1990 strategy targeting so-called nikkeijin, Japanese
emigrants and their offspring, mostly living in Latin America. The expec-
tation was that even though nikkeijin were born in a foreign country,
their Japanese heritage would enable them to adapt with little difficulty to
Japanese society. They were offered renewable working visas and mostly
found employment in blue-collar professions. Starting in 1990, about
300,000 second- and third-generation Japanese made use of the offer.
Adaptation to the Japanese work environment, however, did not always
go as desired and when the financial crisis in 2008 hit, the Japanese
Government even offered money to those immigrants who would return
to their home country.
8 Among others, in a large-scale survey (n = 6,000) conducted in late 2015, Facchini

et al. (2016: 19) found that only 29% of Japanese “supported an increase in levels of
immigration.”
9 Personal communication, June 21, 2018.
Another political compromise was created in 1993 with the so-called

technical intern trainees programme which has allowed participants to stay
in Japan for up to five years. The official reasoning behind this programme
was to offer people from developing countries an option to acquire (tech-
nical) skills during their stay in Japan. Avoiding the label ‘immigration’,
this programme has allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign workers
into the country as ‘trainees’, most of whom were placed with SME,
providing these companies with a badly needed and cheap labour force.
The wide-spread abuse of this programme, however, led even the U.S.
State Department in 2016 to state in its ‘Trafficking in Persons Report’
that the programme “has effectively become a guest-worker program”
with many interns being “placed in jobs that do not teach or develop
technical skills” (Iwamoto, 2016).
In late 2017, the government also included caregivers to the groups
permitted into the country on the trainee programme. This decision
was among others the result of an unsuccessful attempt to attract
care workers under an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) from
Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Insisting on care workers from
these countries to pass the same national care examination as Japanese care
workers in Japanese proved too much of a hurdle for the vast majority of
those who tried (Hirano, 2017). In 2018, pressure from labour-intensive
industries (agriculture, construction, the hotel industry, elderly care, etc.)
moved the government to allow for the immigration of up to 345,000
low-skilled workers for a period of five years.
Based on these programmes and labels (and similar to some Western
democracies), the de facto labour immigration did not show in official
statistics. In the case of Japan, the government’s definition of immigration
only includes those in Japan with a permanent resident status, a definition
that is substantially different from that of the United Nations. According
to the count of Hennings and Mintz (2018: 112), the “size of Japan’s
foreign workforce has been continuously underestimated, mainly because
the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has published, on behalf of
the Japanese government, incomplete and flawed data, which has been
disseminated in research publications and mass media reports”. In fact, in
late 2016, close to 20% of foreigners working in Japan belonged to the
above-mentioned trainee programme. Another 20% were students who
were allowed to work up to 27 hours per week and since the late 1980s
increasingly filled positions in restaurants, shops and services (Hennings
& Mintz, 2018).
To keep labour immigration as low as possible, measures were imple-

mented to facilitate workforce participation of women and senior citizens.
In the field of care, the LDP also expected technology to lighten the
workload (e.g. care robots). There was no attempt by any LDP govern-
ment to change the (sometimes not at all) subliminal narrative of labour
immigration as a threat to social peace. This goes hand in hand with the
almost complete refusal of the state to take in asylum-seeking refugees.
For the time being, pointing at the experience of other democracies with
large-scale immigration seems to suffice to leave the narrative as it is.
The first important trigger for immigration to Korea was government-
led programmes in the early 1990s—the Industrial Trainee System—
which invited foreign workforce to do dangerous, difficult and dirty work,
which the uprising Koreans did not want to do any further. At the begin-
ning of the 2000s, a new system—the Employment Permit System—was
introduced to meet the rising needs of Korean SME allowing foreigners
to stay for three years with the option of one-time extension for another
two. Under the new scheme, even foreigners enjoy Korean labour law
protection and are eligible for the Industrial Accident Compensation
Insurance.
Yet another increase in the influx of foreigners was due to marriage
immigration that also began to take off in the beginning of the 2000s,
only to grow from almost 5,000 marriages in 1990 to more than 20,000
marriages in 2016 (KOSIS) with wives coming mostly from China and
Vietnam, and husbands from China or the US. A major share of the
foreign spouses (about 72% in 2016) is female (KOSIS). Marriage immi-
gration has been strongly supported and promoted by the central as well
as local governments for two reasons: foreigners were welcomed because
they could alleviate the lack of women willing to marry Korean men living
in the countryside, and to ease the general labour shortage.
The Korean Government initiated the legislation of the Act on Treat-
ment of Foreigners in Korea in 2008 as basic framework on the basis of
which central and local governments can react to challenges in the process
of increasing foreigners pouring in. Also in 2008, the Multicultural Fami-
lies Support Act (MFSA) was legislated, which focuses mostly on marriage
migrants and children of mixed families as well as the whole family. Since
then, based on the MFSA, every five years, government agencies develop
another Basic Plan for Multicultural Families Policy. The current Basic
Plan stretches from 2018 to 2022 and envisages that state agencies assist
not only in bride recruitment and family formation, but also in integra-
tion and family stability, raising the next generation, and integration into
the formal labour market (Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, 2018:
10–12; cf. Kim & Kilkey, 2017: 7–10).
Additionally, the government has been actively promoting a systematic
immigration policy for which there are continuously updated versions of
the Basic Plan for Immigration Policy (BPIP) since 2008. At its centre
is an Immigration Policy Committee that serves as a hub to coordinate
policy planning and implementation between the involved government
ministries. The government evaluates immigrants as a determinant to the
creation of new jobs and innovation in society and thus plans to invite
more talented foreigners to contribute to the economy (Immigration
Policy Committee, 2012: 18).
The perception of Korean residents about immigrants is increasingly
negative though the degree is not dramatic, yet. In general, Koreans have
become more reserved in their attitudes towards an increasingly multi-
cultural society, which also has negative repercussions for the adaptation
of immigrants (Choi & Lee, 2016; Kim & Kim, 2017; Yoon, 2016).
Still, more and more Koreans tend to think10 that crime rates increase
because of immigrants (33.1%→46.6%), and that immigrants steal the
jobs of Koreans (23.6%→29.7%). Fewer Koreans think that immigrants
help the economy (53.9%→44.9%), and that through them new ideas
and culture will be introduced (28.6%→22.4%). In line with that eval-
uation, less Koreans think that the number of immigrants should be
increased (25.4%→15.6%). At the same time, people tend to think the
present number of immigrants should be maintained (38.4%→58.7%),
and even less think the number of immigrants should be decreased
(36.2%→25.7%), which makes clear that the attitude is not neces-
sarily in principle against immigrants as such, but against ‘too many’—a
phenomenon that can be observed in many other countries as well.
However, this does not seem to translate into pressure for anti-
immigration policies or such content in party platforms. Rather, it pres-
sures political parties and the government to develop policies to alleviate
related issues, which is why political parties have recently become increas-
ingly interested in the issue of immigration and multicultural society.
Since the early 2000s, more and more parties and individual candidates
10 See Pak (2016) on survey results comparing answers from the year 2003 with those
from the year 2015.
include immigration- and integration-related items in their platforms and

campaign pledges. In 2004, the minor leftist-progressive DLP was the
first political party that mentioned respective items in their manifesto.
Major mainstream parties only started from 2012 on to incorporate
related issues and policy plans in their programmes.11
6 Conclusion
In offering an overview and comparison of Japan and Korea, this chapter
has added evidence that political reactions to demographic change are
crucial and complex but because consequences of demographic change
develop incrementally, political decision makers can easily be tempted to
procrastinate and postpone the search for appropriate policies into the
future. Pressure to act, however, is clearly increasing due to labour short-
ages and a rapidly ageing and shrinking society—a trajectory that Japan
has been on for decades and Korea has entered with considerable speed.
While the demand for foreign workers is expressed by labour-intensive
industries in both countries, governments are also facing an unwillingness
of large parts of the population to allow (more or ‘too much’) immi-
gration. With the share of foreign-born citizens still much lower than in
European and Anglo-Saxon democracies, many in Japan and Korea look
at social developments in the West and conclude that their country would
be better off pursuing different approaches to counter labour shortages
and an ageing society. It remains to be seen whether technology and
the ‘activation’ of women and senior citizens for the labour market that
Japanese governments are striving for will be an attractive option for
Korea to copy. If not, it will be of great interest to observe whether both
countries will see xenophobic, populist parties grow into relevant political
forces as soon as immigration takes place on a larger scale. So far, and in
contrast to many democracies in Europe, the political systems of Japan
and Korea do not feature such parties.
11 This is also the year in which the Philippine-born Jasmin Lee who married a Korean
man entered as the first foreign-born Korean naturalized the National Assembly for the
conservative New Frontier Party (NFP). The only other representative-turned immigrant
is Cho Myŏng-Chul (NFP), who fled North Korea.
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holder.
CHAPTER 9
Demographic Change and Political Order

in Sub-Saharan Africa: How Côte d’Ivoire
and Uganda Deal with Youth Bulge
and Politicized Migration
Christof Hartmann and Catherine Promise Biira
1 Introduction
Africa’s share of global population has grown from 9% in 1950, 14%
in 2005 to 17% in mid-2017. The continent is projected to account
for more than 50% of the global population growth between 2017 and
2050. During this period, Africa’s population is going to increase by
1.3 billion making the continent home to 26% of the world’s popula-
tion in 2050 (UN, 2017). The African Development Bank Group states
that, going by current demographics, the continent shall be home to the
C. Hartmann (B)
Department of Political Science,
e-mail: christof.hartmann@uni-due.de
C. P. Biira
Institute for Regional Integration and Development, Catholic University
of Eastern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_9
220 C. P. BIIRA AND C. HARTMANN
world’s youngest population by 2040 and by 2050, 55% of the conti-

nent’s population shall be living in urban areas (Cleland & Machiyama,
2017: 267).
While the broader contours of these demographic dynamics are well
known, and there is some research exploring specific aspects of the demo-
graphic change and its more direct developmental effects (Cleland &
Machiyama, 2017). The broader political implications of demographic
change in Africa have not been analysed in a more systematic way and
differ markedly from those observed in rich democracies (Vanhuysse &
Goerres, 2012). Population changes have ramifications within and beyond
the confines of the state but the mechanisms by which such changes influ-
ence domestic political order, democracy, peace and security have not
been thoroughly explored (as an exception Green, 2012). The African
Youth emerged as a “powerful category” (Oinas et al., 2018: 2) at the
turn of the millennium and gained currency within debates about devel-
opment, social policies and migration (Abbink, 2005). Even though there
have been incidents of intergroup conflict in some countries, which were
related to youth protests or internal and international migration, this has
not been subject of major scholarly interest. State responses to ensuring
political stability in the face of the changing population structure have
also not been systematically documented and evaluated.
One reason for this relative lack of scholarly production might be the
quite recent emergence of the research field of political demography. As
pointed out by inter alia Kaufmann and Toft (2012) and Vanhuysse and
Goerres (this volume), there has been little dialogue between demogra-
phers and political scientists, and migration researchers have additionally
created their own interdisciplinary community where many aspects of
political demography are discussed without being labelled as such. Within
African studies, low population density has played a central role in making
sense of African history (Iliffe, 1995), failed state-building and the diffi-
culties of broadcasting political power (Herbst, 2000) and in explaining
the manifold attempts by African peasants to avoid taxation and commer-
cial modes of agricultural production (Hyden, 1983). The academic
debate about political change since the continent-wide process of polit-
ical liberalization and democratization in the early 1990s, however, has
put little emphasis on demographic variables.
In line with the broader research programme of the book (and its
understanding of demographic change), we want in this chapter to
9 DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE AND POLITICAL ORDER IN SUB-SAHARAN … 221
explore some effects of demographic change on political order in sub-

Saharan Africa. As Cleland and Machiyama (2017) note, the central
forces of demographic change will be broadly similar across the majority
of countries. While differing population growth and migration affect
dynamics of trans national conflicts, and potentially prospects of regional
integration as well (by changing the relative size of populations and
markets within regional arrangements), we will nevertheless concentrate
here on domestic politics.
We want to single out in particular two aspects of demographic change,
which are of relevance to many African states: first, the rapidly growing
number of young people, and second the strong migratory flows, which
move towards some African countries. Other interesting political dimen-
sions of demographic change such as the role of urbanization or religion
(Nordås, 2012) will be left out. By using two case studies from different
parts of the continent, Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire, we will first ask how
these demographic dynamics (youth bulge, net import of migration) have
affected peaceful engagement with the political system, in particular polit-
ical participation. In a second step, we will take up the argument that
links youth bulge to the onset and dynamics of violent conflicts (Richards,
1997; Urdal, 2012) and ask to which extent demographics have shaped
violent conflict in both countries. We will argue that the stronger mobi-
lization of youth violence in Côte d’Ivoire can be explained by the
particular combination of youth bulge and strong inward migration.
2 Demographic Change
in Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire
2.1 Demographic Trends
Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa bordered by Kenya in the
East; South Sudan in the North; the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DR Congo) in the West; Tanzania in the South; and Rwanda in the
South-west. With a population of 36.7 million in 2016, Uganda is listed
alongside the DR Congo, Ethiopia, Philippines, Egypt, Vietnam, Iran
and Turkey as the emerging demographic heavyweights that shall have a
population of over 100 million in 2050 (Demeny & McNicoll, 2006: 4).
According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, over a period of 25 years
between 1991 and 2016, the country’s population grew by 20 million.
Between 1991 and 2002, the population growth rate was 2.5%. It rose to
3.2% between 2002 and 2013 and fell slightly in 2014 to its current level
of 3.0%.
Côte d’Ivoire is located in West Africa. While smaller in population
compared to Uganda, it has been the economic powerhouse and one of
the more populous countries in this region of Africa, which features many
smaller and thinly populated countries (especially in the Sahel zone). Côte
d’Ivoire has remained the key state for continued French influence in
the region, and the spectacular growth of the agriculture-based economy
between the 1960s and 1980s attracted many millions of migrant workers
from neighbouring countries (Fig. 1).
Notwithstanding some notable differences, Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire
represent typical cases of the demographic and socio-economic features in
sub-Saharan Africa (Canning et al., 2015). Uganda still has a fertility rate
above the African average (and is therefore to have one of the strongest
Fig. 1 Demographic trends in Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda (Note Males are to
the left [black], females to the right [grey]. Source Computations by Richard
Cincotta)
population growths over the next 30 years) but has managed to signif-
icantly reduce the fertility rate over the last two decades (see Table 1).
Côte d’Ivoire’s demographic dynamics have been more in line with the
African average than Uganda’s.
Côte d’Ivoire has a high population of young people with youths 15–
29 constituting 28% of the total population (OECD, 2017) and an age
dependency ratio of 84% (UN, 2017). Uganda’s high population growth
is fuelled by a combination of continued high birth rates and slowly
declining mortality rates. Life expectancy improved from 48.1 years in
1991, to 50.4 in 2002 and to 63.3 in 2014. Uganda has a high popu-
lation of young people with 55% being under the age of 18, and the
age dependency ratio is 103%. The perentage of Ugandans depending on
subsistence agriculture has remained more or less stable since 1990, with
69.0% in 1990, to 67.9 in 2002 to 69.4 in 2014 being engaged in the
sector (UBOS, 2016).
Population changes induced by migration have been a constant feature
of post-colonial Africa. Both the artificial character of the boundaries
of the post-colonial states and the peculiarities of the land regime
contributed to migration within and across state territories. Colonial rule
had formalized different systems of communal land tenure in Africa that
attributed property of land formally to the state while leaving the attri-
bution of user rights to traditional authorities (Boone, 2007). While
traditional rulers’ authority was based on ethnic belonging, immigrants
from other parts of the country or abroad were often invited to settle
and farm within these communities. Private land ownership was relatively
rare in what predominantly remained a smallholder agrarian mode of
production. This was an effective system under conditions of relative low
population density prevailing under both colonial and early decades of
post-colonial rule. The demographic changes led, however, to increased
migration towards the more fertile farmland of a country, as many rural
Africans could no longer access sufficient land in their own ethnic areas
(Green, 2012). In both Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire, there is thus a strong
legacy of internal migration, caused by violent conflicts or facilitated by
public authorities in their attempt to promote the economic fortunes of
specific ethnic groups. No reliable data for these population movements
exist.
With regard to international migration patterns, there are significant
differences between the two countries. The size of the non-Ugandan
population has been declining both in absolute terms and as a proportion
224
Table 1 Key demographic trends in Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda
1950–1955 1965–1970 1985–1990 1995–2000 2005–2010 2010–2015 2015–2020 2025–2030 2045–2050
Population (in mio.)

Africa 179.6 283.3 493.3 645.0 845.1 969.2 1106.5 1418.3 2167.6
CIV 2.6 5.2 12.3 16.7 20.4 23.1 26.1 33.3 51.4
C. P. BIIRA AND C. HARTMANN
Uganda 5.2 9.5 17.5 24.0 33.9 40.1 47.2 63.8 105.7
Population growth (in %)
Africa 2.0 2.5 2.8 2.7 2.7 2.7 2.7 2.4 1.9
CIV 2.8 3.9 3.7 2.8 2.1 2.5 2.5 2.4 2.0
Uganda 2.7 3.3 3.5 3.1 3.5 3.4 3.2 3.0 2.3
Fertility rate (in %)
Africa 6.57 6.70 6.49 5.90 5.40 5.10 4.75 4.12 3.20
CIV 7.45 7.90 6.85 6.05 5.40 5.14 4.81 4.25 3.45
Uganda 6.90 7.12 7.10 6.95 6.38 5.91 5.46 4.62 3.36
Source Own compilation on the basis of UN (2017)

of the total population. In 1991, non-Ugandans were 3.6% of the total

population. This reduced to 1.5% in 2014. However, Uganda has experi-
enced a rise in the influx of refugees entering the country from war-torn
neighbouring countries. As at end of 2019, the entire officially recognized
refugee population on the African Continent was 6,348,744 with almost
1,359,464 being hosted in Uganda alone (UNHCR, 2020). In August
2017, refugees from South Sudan alone entering Uganda had hit the 1
million mark making Uganda the continent’s top-ranking refugee-hosting
country, with Bidi Bidi refugee camp in Yumbe District in Northern
Uganda believed to be the largest refugee settlement camp in the world
(USAID, 2017: 1).
Table 2 clearly shows that Côte d’Ivoire has historically attracted
even more migrants from neighbouring countries than Uganda. This
was related both to the personality of the country’s first President
Houphouët-Boigny who saw himself as a regional leader in West Africa
and to the necessity to attract labour for the expanding export agriculture
sector in Côte d’Ivoire. It “was an economic El Dorado that attracted
West Africans from the wider region to come to make their fortunes”
(McGovern, 2011: 103). Africans mainly from Burkina Faso and Mali
Table 2 International migration patterns in Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda
Year Total Pop. Immig % Total Immig Top immigrant sending Countries
Uganda
1990 17,384,369 3.21 558,307 Rwanda 219,499 Sudan 126,304
1995 20,412,966 3.11 634,620 Sudan 273,062 Rwanda 141,160
2000 23,757,366 2.67 634,703 Sudan 360,660 DRC 95,138
2005 28,042,121 2.33 652,968 Sudan 360,477 DRC 106,170
2010 33,149,416 1.60 529,160 DRC 166,901 Sudan 166,124
2015 39,032,383 3.07 1,197,162 Sudan 611,827 DRC 303,580
Côte d’Ivoire
1990 12,165,908 14.93 1,816,426 Burkina 927,756 Mali 422,476
1995 14,404,340 14.42 2,076,394 Burkina 1,114,233 Mali 445,636
2000 16,517,948 12.07 1,994,135 Burkina 1,117,062 Mali 395,346
2005 18,132,702 11.09 2,010,824 Burkina 1,162,273 Mali 363,010
2010 20,131,707 10.41 2,095,185 Burkina 1,246,597 Mali 342,891
2015 22,701,555 9.58 2,175,399 Burkina 1,294,323 Mali 356,019
Source Own compilation on the basis of UN (2017). Uganda has seen a sharp increase of Sudanese
refugees since 2015; The IOM database covers only all years until 2015; Burkina Faso is abbreviated
here as ‘Burkina’
were staying for the harvesting seasons or permanently in Côte d’Ivoire

and were allowed to use land to grow cocoa and coffee. A national census
held in the mid-1990s revealed that close to 15% of the Ivorian popu-
lation had foreign citizenship and many others were second-generation
immigrants. Migration to Côte d’Ivoire was thus not caused by civil wars
in the regional environment but linked to the economic prospects offered
there.
2.2 Youth Unemployment

Between 2005 and 2050, the proportion of young people aged 0–14 rela-
tive to the whole population in sub-Saharan Africa shall fall from 41.5% in
2005 to 36.9% in 2025 to 28.7% in 2050 (UN, 2017). However, young
people on the continent are struggling to find meaningful employment
opportunities. Standing at 10.9% in 2016, it is commendable that sub-
Saharan Africa has experienced a fall in youth unemployment rates since
2012 (ILO, 2016: 5). Albeit appearing positive, this picture veils the
actual experiences of the continent’s young people. Sub-Saharan African
countries generally exhibit the highest youth working poverty rate glob-
ally which stood at 70% in 2016 (ibid.: 8) and there are huge disparities
in employment participation experiences across states. Uganda as one of
the countries with the youngest age structure globally has 93.5% of its
employed youths in the informal sector. Determining who classifies as
“youth” in Africa is not easy. While the United Nations (UN) define
youth as those between the ages of 15–24, the African Union defines
15–35 as the appropriate range (Fig. 2).
Available data on youth unemployment in Côte d’Ivoire show that
35.7% of all citizens between 15 and 29 are officially unemployed, in
the sense of not working, not going to school or undergoing professional
training (OECD, 2017). Young people and especially young women are
less likely to be employed in the formal sector (18%), with a total of
55% among all working having jobs in the family-business or being self-
employed (68% among young women). According to survey data from
2013, in the rural parts of Côte d’Ivoire less than 10% of all young persons
(15–29) have a regularly paid job in the formal sector. About 54% of
respondents declared not having been to school in their lives, and less
than a third of having completed primary education. In assessing these
data, one should keep in mind that due to the civil war most schools in
the northern half of Côte d’Ivoire remained indeed closed for most of
2,000
1,521
New Jobs (thousands)
1,500
862
1,000
854
476 812
500
0
2007 2012 2017 2022 2027 2032 2037
High Low
Fig. 2 Annual new job requirements for Uganda 2007–2037 (Source National
Population Council Secretariat, Uganda)
the time between 2002 and 2007/8. Both countries thus face a simi-
larly dramatic scenario of a considerable and strongly growing number
of young people who live in precarious situations and face an uncertain
future. Such prospects are certainly not rendered less bleak by the strong
presence of immigrants.
2.3 Institutional Responses to Demographic Change

During the last decades, both states have developed an institutional
architecture to plan and implement population-related policies. Uganda’s
Vision 2040 recognizes the country’s rapid population growth, young
age structure and consequent high child dependency burden among
the threats to the achievement of socioeconomic development. As such,
Vision 2040 pronounced “harnessing the demographic dividend” as one
of the strategies for benefiting from the country’s abundant and youthful
population. Population issues should thus be prioritized in development
planning. There is a minister for Youth and Children’s Affairs under the
Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development (MGLSD) as well as
youth Members of Parliament (MPs) representing the different regions
in the country. In response to the high unemployment rate and poverty
among the youth in the country, from the late 1990s, the Government of
Uganda started directly funding youths to venture into business through
the Youth Entrepreneurial Scheme (YES). The model failed to meet its
objectives because the fund was perceived as a political tool, and although
the monies were given as loans, most of them were never recovered
(Ahaibwe & Mbowa, 2014). In the 2011/2012 financial year, the Youth
Venture Fund, Graduate Venture Fund and Youth Livelihood Program
(YLP) were conceived. Access to the Youth Venture Fund was domi-
nated by urban males mostly from the central region (Ahaibwe, 2014:
16). The most resilient of these programmes has been the YLP whose
implementation started in the 2013/2014 financial year. The programme
targets unemployed and poor youth aged 18–30 years from different
socio-economic backgrounds. Of the 111 billion Uganda Shillings dedi-
cated to the total development budget of the concerned Ministry, for the
2019/2020 financial year, 59% (66 Billion) has been allocated to the YLP
(Ministry of Gender, 2018).
Due to the civil war and the territorial separation of Côte d’Ivoire in
a government-controlled and rebel-held zone between 2002 and 2010,
neither population growth nor youth unemployment were addressed as
key policy issues. With the establishment of a more legitimate govern-
ment in April 2011 and the demobilization of rebels and youth militia,
however, the need to develop more specific policies became obvious. In
2016, a separate Ministry for the Promotion of the Youth, Youth Employ-
ment and Civic Education was finally established. Until then, youth-
related questions had been allocated to the responsibility of different
and changing ministerial portfolios. In a parallel move, the government
enacted a policy document with its main strategies for 2016–2020 (PNJ,
Politique Nationale de la Jeunesse), to be coordinated by the newly created
Ministry. While similar plans had been elaborated since 2004, they had
never been formally endorsed by the government (OECD, 2017).
The PNJ now claims to provide youth-specific orientations for various
sector policies (education and training; employment, communication,
health, citizenship and civic education) and to coordinate the imple-
mentation of activities by different state agencies (at both national and
sub-national level) and non-governmental organizations, but both the
administrative capacities and the financial resources of the new Ministry
have been considered inadequate for this task (OECD, 2017). In the
strongly presidential government system of Côte d’Ivoire, there are few
established mechanisms for inter-ministerial coordination, and the Pres-

ident has also put in place an additional Presidential Council for Youth
Employment (CPEJ) whose role with regard to the Ministry remains
unclear. The presidency also directly manages all programmes that should
benefit the demobilized former rebels (OECD, 2017). The government
has further developed a more participatory approach to working with
youth associations. In 2012, a National Youth Council of Côte d’Ivoire
(CNJCI) had been created with the aim of coordinating eight officially
recognized youth associations among themselves and with the govern-
ment, but the council became operational only in 2016. Youth-specific
civic education has certainly been the weakest part of previous poli-
cies, with youth associations unorganized and poorly sensitized for the
different policy issues.
With regard to migration, both countries have historically practised
an open border policy to refugees, which includes provision of land on
which to build a shelter and grow crops, freedom of movement, the right
to work and access to public services such as health care and education.
In both cases, this also heightened the tensions created as a result of
competition for resources. In Uganda, there have been reports of host
communities registering as refugees in order to benefit from the supplies
being given to the refugees. There have also been reports of rising tension
between the host and refugee communities because the host communi-
ties are also in need of food but cannot access it (USAID, 2017). In Côte
d’Ivoire, migrants have been progressively deprived of their economic and
political rights, as will be explained more in detail below.
3 Demographic Change, Political

Participation and Youth Violence
In 1990, the CIA postulated that the mismatch between growth of jobs
and high fertility could lead to “expanded military establishments in
affected countries as a productive alternative to unemployment” (Liagin,
1996: 28). To the extent that the Youth Bulge might create a huge
potential of mostly unemployed young men, it was considered to also
result in political instability, provide a potential for rebel movements or
cause revolution (Flückiger & Ludwig, 2018; Goldstone, 2002; Urdal,
2012). There has been some speculation why the Arab Spring did not spill
over to African regimes, and the economically and politically frustrated
youth did not go to the streets to demand change (Oinas et al., 2018;
Cavatorta and Bonci, this volume). In exceptional circumstances, such

as in Senegal in 2012, by staging mass protests in the capital city Dakar,
youth mobilization was instrumental in obstructing a manipulative consti-
tutional amendment (which would have allowed for a quasi-monarchical
succession). But Senegal has one of the most urbanized societies in Africa,
and the protests were highly efficient in hindering an authoritarian turn of
an otherwise democratically constituted government (and not a struggle
against long-standing dictatorships as in the Maghreb). In the following
section, we will first discuss how the two major demographic features
outlined above (youth bulge, strong migration) impacted on political
participation, before the second section moves towards an assessment of
effects on the dynamics of violence and warfare in both countries.
3.1 Formal Political Engagement

There is very little systematic and comparative research on youth polit-
ical behaviour on the African continent. As age-disaggregated turnout
data are not available, existing research relies on survey data from Afro-
barometer, a multi-national research project, which has been collecting
standardized individual data in a growing number of African countries
since 1999. These empirical data show lower rates of political engage-
ment among African youth (aged 18–35) in comparison with elders
(Chikwanha & Masunungure, 2007; Lekalake & Gyimah-Boadi, 2016).
This includes a growing abstention from voting in national elections and
from civic activities such as attending community meetings or demonstra-
tions. In addition, country-specific research shows that turnout declined
in national elections after a reduction in voting age (Resnick & Casale,
2013: 1173). The finding that younger people tend to be less engaged in
formal participation in the democratic process, particularly voting, is, of
course, not specific to African countries (Wattenberg, 2007). The survey
found, however, that youth engagement levels in Africa have declined over
time despite the introduction of regional and national youth empower-
ment policies. In contrast to OECD societies, low turnout is also not
compensated by a growing relevance of other forms of political partic-
ipation, including protest activities or community meetings, which are
still less common than voting for Africa’s youth (Resnick & Casale,
2013). Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire record very different levels of polit-
ical interest, with only one out of four youth in Côte d’Ivoire showing
political interest, the lowest share among all African countries included in
the survey (Fig. 3).
A closer look at the country data from the last three survey rounds,
which obviously do not reflect actual voting patterns but self-reported
voting behaviour, confirms both the general trend of lower youth partic-
ipation and the differences among our two cases. When the surveys were
organized, Côte d’Ivoire had gone through a phase of turmoil. A rebel-
lion in 2002 had led to the de facto separation of the country with the
northern part held by rebels and to a strong political mobilization on
both sides. Following a disputed presidential election in November 2010,
a civil war broke out which eventually led to the demise of the incumbent
regime in April 2011 (which had lost the election but did not accept it).
Alassane Ouattara, the candidate of Northern Côte d’Ivoire, then took
power. After nearly nine years of warfare, and de facto collapse of many
state authorities in the rebel-held zones (including schools, judiciary,
medical services), there was certainly a will to reconstruct the economy,
but also a fatigue with regard to political engagement. Many Southerners
continued to consider their previous President Gbagbo (accused at the
International Criminal Court in The Hague) and the former ruling party
Fig. 3 Political interest among young people in Africa (Based on Lekalake and
Gyimah-Boadi [2016])
Fig. 4 Age-specific voting patterns in Côte d’Ivoire (Source Own compilation

on the basis of Afrobarometer: Question was: Did you participate in the last
national elections?)
(with many leaders in prison, and the party properties confiscated) as their
legitimate government, and the current President as installed by foreign
actors such as France and the UN without any legitimacy. This constella-
tion might explain the considerable disillusionment with politics, which
emerges from the Afrobarometer data (Fig. 4). The exceptionally low
participation in the cohort 18–25 years is, however, also explained by the
legal voting age of 21 years in Côte d’Ivoire, with 20–40% of respondents
(depending on survey round) claiming they had been too young to vote.
The much higher interest within the Ugandan youth is probably a
legacy of a tradition of relatively strong political mobilization under
the long-ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) of President
Museveni (since 1986). The Museveni government introduced a five-tier
system of local government back in the 1980s, initiated a broad-based and
participatory constitutional reform process between 1986 and 1993, and
has facilitated constituency-based politics with some downward account-
ability. With the President in power for now more than 30 years, the
regime has turned increasingly authoritarian which might have increased
political interest in a country of ‘distrusting democrats’ (Moehler, 2007).
Some of the Afrobarometer data remain puzzling, as elections were held
in February 2011 and February 2016, and actual voting behaviour in
the last elections should be the same between Round 5 and 6, while the
self-reported behaviour strongly varies (see Fig. 5).
Low youth turnout in African countries has been explained by two
main explanatory factors: individual variables such as youth’s differential
access to political information, knowledge and socio-economic resources,
Fig. 5 Age-specific voting patterns in Uganda (Source Own compilation on the

basis of Afrobarometer: Question was: Did you participate in the last national
elections?)
and structural variables highlighting the political-institutional context of

elections, such as partisan affinities, the competitiveness of elections and
the importance of external political efficacy (Resnick & Casale, 2013).
Access to information and knowledge about electoral processes might
indeed explain the difference between Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire. In
Uganda, elections have been regularly organized at all tiers of govern-
ment during the last three decades, and an electoral system was applied
(plurality in single-member constituencies) which is easy to understand.
In Côte d’Ivoire, on the contrary, no local elections have been organized,
and since the beginning of political liberalization in the early 1990s, only
four national elections were held, in 1995, 2000 and then again in 2010
and 2015, with the 2000 and 2010 elections ending in popular rebel-
lion and civil war, respectively. The electoral system is a party-list-based
plurality system (in single or multi-member constituencies) which creates
higher thresholds for candidature. Côte d’Ivoire is one of a few coun-
tries in Africa (and beyond) which continues to restrict suffrage to voters
of 21 years or older. One could thus argue that lower turnout in Côte
d’Ivoire could be explained by a generalized lack of trust in the elec-
toral process. 2014 Afrobarometer data show indeed that in Côte d’Ivoire
many youth respondents, especially in the rural areas, found electoral
registration too cumbersome (OECD, 2017: 40) or could not identify
themselves on the electoral lists.
Structural variables seem to matter in Africa as well but can hardly

explain the strong variation among our cases. Competitiveness of elec-
tions, which should increase participation, is lower in Uganda than in
Côte d’Ivoire, and opposition parties more fragmented and less insti-
tutionalized. The perception of the efficacy of elections might, on the
contrary, be stronger in Uganda, especially taking into account the
multi-tier electoral system. While Ivorian parties function on a quite
gerontocratic basis and the leaders of the three main parties are all above
70 years, in Uganda, there is some representation of young MPs in
parliament (6.35% at age 18–34; 1.59% at age 18–29). The Ugandan
Parliament (2016–2021) had seven MPs who joined parliament below
30 years of age, while the youngest MP in Côte d’Ivoire’s Parliament at
the time was 31 years old. The narrative about why President Museveni
of Uganda should leave power has increasingly become dominated by the
argument that the country has a huge population of young people who
should be left to take charge. In fact, in late 2017, during the process
of changing Uganda’s Constitution to remove the presidential age limit
of 75, opposition from within parliament came to be notably associated
with Robert Kyagulanyi (a.k.a. Bobi Wine), 35 at the time, who was seen
as an embodiment of the aspirations of Uganda’s young people. Bobi
Wine then emerged as the de facto leader of a movement named ‘people
power’ which was developed into the National Unity Platform (NUP) as
the political party through which Bobi Wine shall contest for the coun-
try’s presidency in 2021. However, instead of serving to consolidate the
opposition, ‘people power’ has also somewhat contributed to the breakup
of Uganda’s most formidable opposition political party, the Forum for
Democratic Change (FDC) and has drawn membership from other oppo-
sition parties thus further dividing rather than consolidating the country’s
opposition.
To what extent did migratory patterns have an effect on political
participation and regime legitimacy? The open-door policy initiated by
President Houphouët-Boigny in Côte d’Ivoire in the 1960s granted not
only economic but also political rights to several million immigrants from
neighbouring countries. Under the mostly non-competitive elections of
the single-party era, foreigners were even allowed to vote (and useful to
increase turnout). Due to the economic crisis starting in the 1980s, and
a combination of growing land pressure and rapid demographic growth,
many Ivoirians returned from the cities to their ethnic homelands finding
‘their’ land cultivated by Ivorian immigrants and ‘foreigners’. After the
death of Houphouët-Boigny in 1993, a succession crisis broke out, and

competition mainly turned the President’s designated heir from his own
ethnic group (Henri K. Bedié) against the Prime Minister who originated
from the North of Côte d’Ivoire (Ouattara). Bedié then opened a pando-
ra’s box by introducing controversial new citizenship rules restricting
political and economic rights to ‘autochthonous’ Ivoirians, who could
prove their descent from Ivorian parents (ivoirité). The main cause behind
this policy was elite competition and voting rights, as Ouattara’s mother
apparently was from Burkina Faso, but the policies led to a general
politicization of ethnic relationships and land conflicts. As some of the
populations living in Northern Côte d’Ivoire shared ethnic identity with
people from neighbouring Sahel states, they were disenfranchised in the
process, or saw their careers in the administration or the military blocked.
Formal political participation of (assumed) migrants, both as candidates
and as voters, and controversies about their numbers took centre stage in
the politics of Côte d’Ivoire since the 1990s and have remained so ever
since.
Given its liberal refugee policy, Uganda has played host to Rwandan
refugees since the 1950s. Several formerly Rwandan refugees found their
way into Uganda’s public administration and many played major roles in
the intelligence services and the NRA which brought the current regime
to power in 1986. They subsequently launched the Rwandan Patriotic
Front (RPF) war that brought Rwanda’s current regime to power in
1994. Several Banyarwanda live in two worlds, playing significant roles
in business and politics, owning properties and educating their children
in both Uganda and Rwanda. As a result, there is a complex relationship
between Uganda and Rwanda. With accusations and counter-accusations
of interfering in each other’s security affairs, over the years, Uganda and
Rwanda’s relationship has oscillated between cordial and sour. It is clear
that the return of many Rwandan refugees to Kigali in the wake of the
1994 military victory did not mark an end to their involvement in Ugan-
da’s politics. It simply transformed it from direct to covert involvement
this time based on suspicion, not trust, of the Ugandan Government.
Given the limited number of Rwandan immigrants (see Table 1 above),
discussion of Rwandan influence on Ugandan politics has never reached
the level of open politicization as seen in the case of Côte d’Ivoire.
In contexts of mass migration, we observe, both between Uganda and
Rwanda and between Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, the emergence of
transnational elite coalitions. Such coalitions may promote good bilateral
relationships and facilitate further migration, or, depending on changing

frame conditions, allow for the politicization of immigrant influence in
the economic sphere or high politics, and have a deep impact on political
order and the legitimacy of aspiring ‘nation’ states.
3.2 Youth-Specific Mobilization

While formal political participation seems not to be valued as an instru-
ment of political empowerment and translation of numerical weight into
political influence, both countries feature nevertheless significant forms of
youth-specific political mobilization. According to Afrobarometer data,
over the last decade, both in Côte d’Ivoire and in Uganda, around 10%
of respondents consistently confirmed they had participated in a demon-
stration or protest march, with only a minimally stronger participation
among the younger and more urban respondents (own analysis of Afro-
barometer data), and a slightly higher participation in Côte d’Ivoire in
comparison with Uganda. In Uganda, youth has been mobilized both
by and against the regime mainly during electoral campaigns. Opposi-
tional mobilization has occurred through opposition party youth wings.
Other opposition-led activities that attracted mostly youth included mass
campaigns during general and by-elections, and demonstrations such as
the ‘walk to work’ campaigns that followed the 2011 general elections and
occurred again in October 2017. This was spurred by the government’s
(eventually successful) plan of changing the constitution by removing the
presidential age limit of 75 so as to allow for President Museveni who shall
have passed that age to run again in 2021. At various occasions, opposi-
tion leader Kiiza Besigye called for mass protests, saying that the people’s
power can bring down the regime and has called on citizens to use defi-
ance to sabotage the regime (Kiiza Besigye 2017 Press Conference, see
YouTube Video in references).
If no Arab Spring-like protests have taken root in Uganda yet, this
is probably caused by both structural features of the regime and the
much stronger youth mobilization by the incumbent government. There
is a highly centralized and all-powerful presidency anchored on a unique
marriage of military and politics (Kaka, 2016). As commander in chief,
albeit unconstitutionally, the President has used this power to turn the
military into an instrument against anti-regime sentiment, evidence of
which is police and military action on opposition in 2001, 2006, 2011,
2016 and in by-elections that have occurred since. After decades of civil
war, the NRM regime has also maintained relative peace and stability,
and the less urbanized features of Uganda create a cushion against the
effects of unemployment and make sustained resistance difficult, giving
a semblance of stability to the coercive capacity of the regime. The
regime has employed several strategies of mobilizing the youth to serve its
purposes. While we return to formation of non-state armed groups below,
the ruling party has used patronage to either co-opt organized youth
groups to serve its interests or has mobilized groups for rent seeking and
political mobilization in its favour. Given its financial muscle, the sitting
regime has outcompeted the opposition in getting such opportunistic
groups on their side thereby eating into the mobilization base of the
opposition for potential mass protests. Veiled as support for poverty erad-
ication, President Museveni has personally and through his aides donated
several billions of shillings to Youth and Women’s groups to win their
support in elections over the years (Daily Monitor, April 16, 2018).
Youth protest in Côte d’Ivoire has unfolded in different ways. Univer-
sities and in particular Abidjan’s main public university in Cocody have
been hotbeds of political mobilization practically since the early 1970s.
President Laurent Gbagbo (2000–2010) had been a university history
lecturer before becoming President, and both rebel leader Guillaume
Soro (Speaker of Parliament until 2019) and Gbagbo’s key ally and
militia leader Charles Blé Goudé (now also in The Hague) were members
of the Student Union and representing their parties within university
politics (Konaté, 2003). FESCI, the main student union, had gained
importance as a basis for (often violent) oppositional activity during the
1980s and 1990s. Following the military coup in late 1999, their leaders
perceived the opportunity to claim power and wealth for their generation
(McGovern, 2011).
3.3 Youth Violence and Civil War

The descent of Côte d’Ivoire into civil war (2002–2007) cannot be
explained without taking into account the two demographic patterns
discussed in this article, the youth bulge and a strong tradition of immi-
gration. The war started with a rebellion in 2002, when disgruntled
army officers from the North staged a military coup, which after some
months of fighting led to a de facto separation of the country in a rebel-
held zone in the North and a government-controlled zone in the South
(including the cocoa-producing areas). The Government of Burkina Faso
(and President Blaise Compaoré) served as main ally of the rebels. The
Peace Accords of Ouagadougou (2007) eventually allowed preparations
for elections, a reunification of the two territories and the demobiliza-
tion of rebels and militias. The presidential elections were finally held on
31 October 2010. No candidate managed to gain an absolute majority
in the first round, and in an increasing violent atmosphere, a presiden-
tial run-off was held between incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo and
opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara on 27 November 2010. A dispute
soon emerged about who had won the elections leading to a military
intervention by France, the UN and the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS), and a short civil war that led to the military
victory of the rebel forces, supported by French and UN troops in early
April 2011. After many failed attempts, Ouattara eventually became Pres-
ident of the Republic (and was re-elected in 2015), but the supporters
of Gbagbo continue to see him as an immigrant and foreigner, who has
been imposed on autochthonous Ivorians by an international conspiracy.
Former rebel leaders with strong connections to the Burkinabè security
services continue to have important roles in the Ivorian security apparatus.
During the civil war, youth militias (Young Patriots) became a loyal
pillar of Gbagbo’s regime and were instrumental not only in terrorizing
the opposition-loyal suburbs of Abidjan, but also in claiming to be the
representatives of a new national project in which no role was left for
Northerners and ‘allochthones’ (Banégas, 2006). The politically active
young generation perceived itself as the most radical flag-bearers of an
autochthony movement, which linked the generational quest for emanci-
pation and power (‘second independence’ from France) to specific ideas
about the contours of the political community. According to such radical
ideas, citizenship (and the benefits linked to it such as legal access to
land) should be reserved for true Ivoirians. One could thus argue that
the bulk of young people who became politicized in the specific context
of the rebellion and civil war, affiliated with politico-military movements
which allowed them to get access to material resources and social recog-
nition as part of a legitimate ‘political project’. At the same time, none
of these movements emerged in opposition to the regime, but rather
with more or less open financial support by the Gbagbo government.
When Gbagbo was defeated in April 2011, most of these militias were
disbanded and disappeared practically overnight. The civil war has thus
left a legacy of violent mobilization and politicization, with thousands of
young people without prior military training using control of means of
violence to protest and to order around others. It has also left a legacy
of extreme frustration as a ‘conspiracy’ of France and a part of the estab-
lished elite ultimately defeated this emancipatory nationalist project, and
only previously marginalized youth involved on the side of the rebels had
a chance of being integrated into the new national army.
One can observe a militarization of Ugandan youth as well, but this has
led neither to civil war nor to the articulation of an alternative political
project. Creation and/or co-option of groups like Uganda Taxi Operators
and Drivers’ Association (UTODA) 1986–2012, Black mambas (2005),
Kiboko Squad (2007), BodaBoda 2010 from 2010 to 2017, Crime preven-
ters 2016–2018, Kifeesi (2010–) as militias to supplement the coercive
machinery of the state has been a long-term strategy of maintaining polit-
ical control by the regime (Goodfellow, 2017). These groups are created
or activated either in the run-up to a general election or after a major
political occurrence that the state is keen to contain or manage. They
have meted out violence on real and perceived opponents of the regime,
attacked courts of law and rearrested acquitted persons or protested the
trial of their benefactors, enabling the regime to maintain a grip on their
areas of influence.
Uganda’s transport sector is dominated by motorcycle taxis locally
known as ‘bodaboda’. It is estimated that bodabodas number at between
200,000 and 300,000, meaning that they are the second highest source
of employment after agriculture in Uganda (Kigambo, 2017). The
sector is dominated by youthful males who would have otherwise been
unemployed. One could argue that the first battle line during electoral
periods is drawn on the bodaboda field as aspirants outdo each other
to hire bodabodas to accompany them for nomination. In 2011, the
bodaboda were used by the opposition in Uganda’s urban areas to accom-
pany and draw crowds for the main opposition presidential candidate
Besigye. Sensing that the opposition had moved ahead of it in mobi-
lizing bodabodas to serve its political ends, in a knee-jerk reaction, the
ruling party through the Uganda Police decided to create and activate
camps within the bodaboda sector. Bodaboda 2010 was thus a deliberate
creation of the Uganda Police Force, which organized its structures and
even chose the leader who happened to be the chairman of the NRM
in one of the city’s divisions (Interview Police Officer, June 8, 2018).
Having been deployed to maintain the control of the regime over the
city, and supported by the government in this endeavour, Bodaboda 2010
started engaging in criminal acts and violent murders with impunity as the
police watched on. The military eventually raided their offices, arrested
the leaders and had them charged in the military martial court. The
Inspector General of Police who had created and sanctioned the work of
the group and the Security Minister were subsequently relieved of their
duties.
About two years before the 2016 elections, Uganda witnessed a rise
in the activity of so-called Crime Preventers. Although the concept of
crime preventers which is similar to the ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ in other
countries existed and took shape under the community policing strategy
of the Uganda Police Force since the early 1990s, the 2014 activity was
different in two respects: it was a massive recruitment unsupported by any
clear policy or guideline and it was highly politicized. Having realized how
unemployed youths had ironically been used by the opposition to demon-
strate in the ‘walk to work’ protests after the 2011 elections, the 2014
massive recruitment of such people countrywide was meant to ‘withdraw’
them from the pool which the opposition could have used to mobilize
supporters in the 2016 elections. The recruitment of Crime Preventers
was not supported by any regulatory framework or policy within the
police and they were recruited through pre-existing structures of Local
Councils (LCs) at village level and the Police Community Liaison offi-
cers. When the group was being commissioned in October 2014, the
Inspector General of Police at the time informed the President that the
recruits were 11 million, but other sources within the police suggest that
realistically speaking they are not more than 5 million (Uganda had a total
population of 40 million at the time). Although they were recruited as
volunteers, a budget was set aside for their lunch facilitation thus making
the alleged inflation of their number neither accidental nor inconsequen-
tial (Interview Police Officer, June 8, 2018). According to their website,
the group is a registered NGO comprised of 80% youth launched after
the guidance of the President who ‘assigned the youth a mission to estab-
lish a patriotic movement aimed at diagnosing the society’s problems and
finding practical solutions to the problems’.1 When their National Coor-
dinator declared that the group was ready to die for the President and
would stand against those opposed to changing the constitution to allow
him to run for another term in 2021, it could no longer be denied that
they see their mission as that of serving partisan interests intended to keep
1 http://www.ncpfug.org/.
President Museveni in power. After training, the treatment of the Crime

Preventers varied from one group to another. Some were given yellow
uniforms, which is the colour of the ruling party, some were ferried to
work elsewhere contrary to the idea that they should be working within
their communities of residence and there were rumours that they were
going to be armed. These concerns were shared by the leader of the oppo-
sition with the government, which was urged to enact a law governing
the operations of the group. A draft policy was eventually submitted to
cabinet but has not been discussed yet. Following the dismissal of the
Inspector General of Police in March 2018, the new management of the
police was planning to disband the Crime Preventers because they were
readily slipping out of the control of the police. Recognizing the polit-
ical value of maintaining the group, however, the President declared the
Crime Preventers a reserve force of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces
(UPDF) in an address to representatives of the group drawn from the
districts.
4 Conclusion
Our analysis of demographic trends in Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire has
revealed a number of interesting results. The population of both coun-
tries is still strongly growing and becoming more youthful, in line with
developments in most other sub-Saharan African states. This represents
a major challenge for policymaking, especially with regard to the provi-
sion of jobs and quality education. At the same time, both Côte d’Ivoire
and Uganda have been and continue to be net importers of migration,
albeit for different reasons (economic or conflict-induced). The political
management of youth bulge is thus becoming even more complex, and
emigration apparently does not work as an effective exit option for the
vast majority of frustrated and unemployed young people.
The growing number of young people without economic perspectives
and precarious prospects of leading a decent (family) life has led neither
to a massive eruption of political violence, nor to the questioning of the
legitimacy of the existing political order and established modes of political
regulation. The trajectory of youth political engagement and mobilization
is thus quite different from the countries of the Arab Spring (Cava-
torta and Bonci, this volume). It is, however, also different from Sierra
Leone or Liberia, where massive youth violence was a main character-
istic of protracted civil wars (Richards, 1997). Where the youth become
violent in Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire, this seems to occur in a context

of elite-instigated and controlled mobilization, with violence being one
instrument among others in the political competition. Economic exclu-
sion makes it easier for politicians of all parties to manipulate youth
when small amounts of money suffice to make young people attend
election rallies or intimidate political opponents. And the cyclical use or
abuse of public employment for political or electoral purposes, notably
in police and domestic security jobs, is of course a key manipulation
tool of powerholders everywhere (Tepe & Vanhuysse, 2009, 2013). In
Uganda, the incumbent autocratic regime learned quickly to massively
invest in unemployed youth as a political instrument, especially in the
pre-electoral phase. It temporarily recruited a considerable section of the
youth as para-military forces and managed so far to maintain stability for
the government of President Museveni. Three conditions, namely low
appreciation of their agency and an over-reliance on individual leaders, a
social safety system that encourages dependency on relatives and friends
especially during difficult economic times, as well as the use of violence
to quell demonstrations, obstruct a stronger anti-regime mobilization.
In Côte d’Ivoire, political mobilization led to a civil war and a divi-
sion of the country. The negative scenarios related to the Youth Bulge
became more manifest in this context, but the Gbagbo regime was largely
successful in maintaining a strict control over the youth militias it had
created. It seems more complicated for the current government of Pres-
ident Ouattara to uphold discipline and non-violent behaviour of both
the official security apparatus and the demobilized former security forces,
among them many youths. In both Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda, the domi-
nant, and ultimately successful, strategy of state elites remained their
capacity to manage access to the official police and military apparatus,
and to other private benefits for youth leaders.
Finally, the ivoirité project, where at least some youth leaders were
searching for an alternative political order, could be interpreted as a
populist but quite rational attempt to secure a more meaningful socio-
economic citizenship, by artificially reducing the size of the political
community. Marginalizing and effectively disenfranchising migrants and
people with migrant background would certainly have increased the
prospects of securing access to land or to a career in the public service
or the military apparatus. Strong migration might thus indeed affect the
mobilization of the youth.
Political demography will remain an important research agenda for

students of African politics. While youth bulge or migration does not
present uniform challenges to all African countries, they should be
included as important explanatory factors for our understanding of the
political trajectories of African regimes and states (Van Gyampo & Anyi-
doho, 2019). Most African states have started to develop an array of
policy instruments to manage demographic change and migration. African
governments know very well that the demographic changes and the youth
bulge are an opportunity but also a major liability, especially in a context
of raising civic awareness and educational levels, as well as more compet-
itive elections where leaders risk being voted out of office. Government
performance in fighting youth unemployment might not be decisive for
political survival any time soon, but political strategies to deal with the
youth bulge will remain on the political agenda.
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holder.
CHAPTER 10
The Maghreb Region: Waithood, the Myth

of Youth Bulges and the Reality of Frustrated
Aspirations
Alessandra Bonci and Francesco Cavatorta
1 Introduction: Political
Demography in Tunisia and Morocco
Demographic change in the Maghreb is central today to a better under-
standing of social and political dynamics across the Mediterranean region.
As the uprisings of 2010–2011 powerfully illustrated, demographic trends
have considerable domestic and international implications, particularly
when young people are the protagonists of revolutionary change. This
chapter focuses on the political demography of Tunisia and Morocco. Our
aim is to move away from an obsession with youth bulges or ‘hordes’ of
young people at the doors of Europe and to understand the relation-
ship between demography and political outcomes. Morocco and Tunisia
A. Bonci (B) · F. Cavatorta

Laval University, Québec, Canada
e-mail: alessandra.bonci.1@ulaval.ca
F. Cavatorta
e-mail: francesco.cavatorta@pol.ulaval.ca

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_10
248 A. BONCI AND F. CAVATORTA
have been chosen for two interrelated reasons. First, they present similar
demographic trends, having experienced massive migratory movements
over several decades and a decreasing fertility rate in the early 1980s. In
recent years, fertility trends have continued to decline in Morocco and
have risen slightly in Tunisia. Second, both countries were at the forefront
of the 2011 Arab uprisings, but they experienced contrasting trajecto-
ries. The Ben Ali (Tunisia) regime collapsed in early 2011, leading to a
successful process of democratization, which culminated with the approval
of a new liberal-democratic constitution in January 2014. Conversely,
the Moroccan regime implemented cosmetic institutional reforms to
assuage protesters and its political system based on the institutional and
constitutional primacy of the executive monarchy remains unchanged.
Thus, Morocco and Tunisia are useful cases to discuss divergent political
outcomes despite reasonably similar demographic trends.
This chapter develops into three sections. We first discuss demographic
changes in Morocco and Tunisia, and then their socio-political implica-
tions and demographic politics (on ageing politics, see, e.g., Vanhuysse
& Goerres, 2012; this volume). We take into account variables such as
unemployment rates, inactivity rates, the role of education, the spread of
the informal sector and the ‘waithood’ phenomenon, to ask two ques-
tions: first, do Morocco and Tunisia face a youth-related crisis? And
second, what are the consequences of broad demographic changes for
regime stability and legitimacy in Morocco and Tunisia? In this regard,
we address the problems and opportunities these countries face. We focus
specifically on the role of the supposed youth bulge, its meaning and its
mediatized impact. What is the political role of demographic changes in
Morocco and Tunisia? Is there a dominant political discourse on demog-
raphy? We consider the institutional arrangements the Moroccan and
Tunisian governments introduced to cope with the main challenges of
demographic shifts. We conclude our chapter with a brief summary and
broaden our discussion to future scenarios.
2 Demographic Trends in Morocco and Tunisia

The data we use in this chapter come from multiple sources, namely
the Open Science Framework—Global Political Demography Database,
the National Statistics Institute of Tunisia (INS), the High Commis-
sion for Planning (HCP) in Morocco, the Economic Research Forum
(ERF) based in Cairo and the World Bank. The lack of data that some
10 THE MAGHREB REGION: WAITHOOD, THE MYTH OF YOUTH … 249
countries experienced in the post-Arab uprisings years impacts overall reli-

ability (Pellicer et al., 2015); moreover, there are justified concerns when
collecting data from authoritarian countries. For instance, throughout
the Ben Ali era in Tunisia, public information was manipulated to serve
propagandistic claims about the regime’s successes (Al-Issawi, 2012).
While data about the real rate of unemployment, and in particular youth
unemployment, have always been a source of dispute between national
governments and international financial institutions and investors (Hibou
et al., 2011),1 this is less of a problem for population data.
The total population of Morocco in 1990 was just below 25 million
people. It increased to above 34 million in 2015 and might reach 42
million by 2040. The same trend occurs in Tunisia, where popula-
tion size surged since 1990 from above 8 million to above 11 million
people in 2015, with more than 13 million people expected by 2040
(Goerres et al., 2020). But while total population has been growing in
Tunisia and Morocco since 1990, the average annual rate of population
growth has decreased. This leads us to address two mythical phenomena:
massive population growth and the ‘youth bulge’. Moroccan and Tunisian
population growth is inferior to the Arab world average (UN Popula-
tion Division, 2017). When compared with the African and sub-Saharan
African growth trend, it is even much lower. As Fig. 1 shows, the average
annual rate of population change in North Africa is decreasing, especially
in Tunisia. Thus, when compared to the rest of Africa, North Africa is
not undergoing a demographic explosion. In addition, it should not be
assumed that a demographic explosion is, in itself, negative.
The composition of the population in the region today is mainly youth-
based. However, the median age is increasing over time: from 19 in
1990 to 27 in 2015 and 36 in 2040 in Morocco and from 21 to 31
and 38 in Tunisia, respectively. The so-called youth bulge for the future
1 Hibou et al. (2011) analysed the data diffusion in the Maghreb after the revolu-
tions and observed specific trends. First, knowledge is carefully ‘selected’ to fit a shared
discourse. Second, scholars focus on the manipulated representation of numbers, which
are negotiated according to the international power balance and to political and ideolog-
ical self-serving needs. Third, data can be omitted or hidden. Hibou et al. (2011) again
explain that there are many techniques for data falsification, such as non-publication or
rewriting of data, as well as the circulation of raw data. This latter technique is very insid-
ious, since if data are available and ‘transparent’ on the one hand, they are nothing but
messy and incomprehensible noise on the other. So, to overcome the reliability problem,
we used multiple sources and we grounded our arguments on the literature when numbers
were not available.
UN Data - Average annual rate of population change

3.00
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
1900-1995 2010-2015 2035-2040
Sub-Saharan Africa Africa Northern Africa Morocco Tunisia
Fig. 1 Average annual rate of population change in comparison (Source UN

Population Division (2017); World Population Prospects. The 2017 Revision,
custom date acquired via website)
may thus need to be reassessed. Cincotta (2017) highlights that polit-

ical demography has been crucial in identifying which countries can or
cannot hope for a democratic future and points to the strong correlation
between increasing median age and increasing liberal democracy: “the
younger a population is, the less likely it is to be a liberal democracy”.
This correlation, for Cincotta, is “political demography’s most tested rela-
tionship” (Cincotta, 2017: 2). Interestingly, Cincotta puts forward eight
main rules about political demography forecasting. First, the most age-
structurally mature states are expected to have the best chance to be
liberal democracies. Second, the age-structurally youngest states (below
25.5 years’ median age) are the least likely to become liberal democra-
cies in the short run. Third, “where a revolution occurs in a state with
a youthful population, expect either the authoritarian regime to remain
in power or to be replaced by another authoritarian regime” (Cincotta,
2017: 2). Fourth, youthful states reaching the ‘free’ status of Freedom
House can lose it within a decade, as Mali did for example. Fifth, to
states whose population is less than five million, rules one to four do not
apply. Sixth, “expect states that are ruled by an ideological single-party

regime or another type of ideological political monopoly—for example,
Iran’s theocracy—to mature without liberalization” (Cincotta, 2017: 2).
Seventh, states led by revolutionary leaders or a strong man are less likely
to attain the ‘free’ status. And eighth, “expect a state ruled by a military
junta/ruler or absolute monarch to yield to a more democratic regime
before the population attains a mature age-structure (before a median
age of 35.5 years)” (Cincotta, 2017: 2).
Political demographic rules work well because age structure affects
both society and state capacity. The potential of political demography
as a field is growing quickly (Cincotta and Weber, this volume; Goerres
& Vanhuysse, 2012; Vanhuysse and Goerres, this volume). Forecasting
is only one aspect of it. In fact, political demography is deeply linked to
security, too. Changes in demographic conditions, migrations, population
growth, changing proportions of ethnic and religious groups have serious
political and socio-economic outcomes within societies (Cincotta, 2004).
Cincotta employs eight ‘demographic topics’ usually linked to conflict,
violence and regime-instability. These are the ‘youth bulge’, a rapid urban
population growth, a low level of per capita cropland/fresh water, high
mortality rate among working-age adults, differential growth rate among
ethnic and religious groups, migration, ageing and high sex ratios.
The population pyramids in Fig. 2 provide crucial insights into the
socio-political conditions in Morocco and Tunisia. We can see a ‘bulge’
in 1990, which disappears in 2020 and in the 2040 projections. Morocco
and Tunisia are thus getting ‘older’, and following Cincotta, they are
more likely to manage potential future unrest without descending into
widespread chaos. In fact, although the democratic process is likely to
have ups and downs in Tunisia, it would be ‘statistically uncommon’ for
the country to experience a civil war: the Cincotta threshold for stability
is met in countries where the median age is 26 years old (the borderline
between a ‘youth bulge’ and a ‘young population’).
Table 1 shows the demographic shift on different socio-economic
indicators such as migration, absolute size of the population, popula-
tion density, urban density, home ownership by age group, youth/prime
age unemployment gaps, electoral turnout rate by age groups and fiscal
revenue as percent of GDP. We briefly discuss the data to illustrate the
demographic change in our case studies.
Political demographers focus their attention on the relative size of age
groups and the political implications of changing demographic trends.
Fig. 2 Population pyramids for Morocco and Tunisia (Note Males are to the left
Both Morocco and Tunisia show a decrease in the size of the youngest
age groups (5–9 and 10–14) since 1990. There is a slight growth for
the group of 15–19-year-olds between 2015 and 2040. The strongest
growth is among 30–34- and 80–84-year-olds. In other words, Tunisia
and Morocco are growing old. This is also confirmed by fertility trends. In
Tunisia, the fertility rate dropped from 2.98% in 1990 to 2.25% in 2015
and it will keep on falling to 1.9% by 2040. The same trend is occurring
in Morocco, where a 3.7% fertility rate in 1990 falls to 2.6% in 2015 and
will drop to 2.0% by 2040. How can we explain such a decreasing trend?
What are the main political demography consequences?
3 Young People’s Social

and Economic Circumstances
Tunisia and Morocco now have the lowest fertility rates in North Africa.
The variables most likely to have influenced the fertility rate over time are
the unemployment rate, the inactivity rate (NEET), the role of educa-
tion, the spread of the informal sector and the waithood phenomenon.
Table 1 Demographic shift on different socio-economic indicators
1990 2015 2040
Tunisia
Net.migration 140.341 −20.000 −20.000
(1990–1995) (2015–2020) (2040–2045)
Pop.density 52.9 72.5 86.4
Urban.pop 57.9 66.8
Absolute.size.pop 8232.7968 11,253.5537 13,165.833
Median.age 21 31 38
Youth.unemp.
Home.own.age
Turnout.age
Fiscal.%GDP
Morocco
Net.migration −466.627 −257.096 −257.096
(1990–1995) (2015–2020) (2040–2045)
Pop.density 55.7 77.9 97.9
Urban.pop 48.3 60
Absolute.size.pop 24,950.1289 34,377.5117 42,148.4257
Median.age 19 27 36
Youth.unemp. 31%
Source Compiled by authors
Sutton forecasted that the fertility rate in the Maghreb region would
have soon reached “projections to near zero […] by the year 2025”
thanks to birth control policies (Sutton, 1999: 111). This projection was
based on the belief that urbanization, the education of women, a greater
participation in employment and family planning would lead to a strong
fertility decline. However, this has not materialized. For instance, family
planning policies did not perform well because of governments’ negli-
gence and lack of investments. Family planning in Tunisia was launched
after independence in 1964 (Lapham, 1970: 241). In Morocco, non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) and later, in 1966, the Ministry
of Health supported similar policies. However, both the Moroccan and
Tunisian regimes progressively abandoned the policy because of a mixture
of lack of funding, backlash from traditional sectors of society and
changing political priorities. Government policies facilitated the decrease
in fertility rates, as Sutton had argued, in a context of increasing urban-
ization, female education and slight diminutions in conservative social
attitudes over time in both countries. Conservative political and social
views persist in Tunisia for instance, but they have been decreasing over
time, particularly with regard to the role of women in society (Teti et al.,
2018). The problem is that increased urbanization and education did not
translate into employment for many young people, especially women. As
Fargues argues (2017: 3), “[r]ising education levels naturally translate to
rising expectations”; however, these expectations were frustrated. Fargues
(2017: 4) claims that such a frustration is one of the leading causes of
emigration and youth discontent.
Employment is crucial in determining young people’s economic
stability, their choice to form new families and their political behaviour
everywhere.2 Moreover, “there is still considerable public anxiety around
the institution of marriage and the ability of young people to marry in a
timely fashion in the region” (Assaad et al. 2017: 10). Marriage in North
Africa is considered a “high-risk endeavor” (ibid.: 2), because of its costs
and its effects on potential living conditions, especially for brides. Sabha
(2014) analysed youth unemployment by comparing Tunisia, Egypt,
Morocco and Jordan after the Arab Spring, and shows that in Egypt
and Tunisia the condition of youth in the labour market has worsened
after the Arab Awakening. The unemployment rate in 2013 was higher
among youth in Tunisia and Egypt, which directly experienced the short-
term negative economic effects of the uprisings. In contrast, Morocco and
Jordan, which did not go through institutional upheavals, did better. If
we look at the unemployment rate for females, we can observe that the
deepest cleavage before and after the Arab uprisings is, again, in Egypt,
followed by Tunisia. As Sabha (2014) highlights, the only country where
more women joined the labour force is Morocco. The inactivity rate
remained stable in Egypt and Tunisia after the Arab uprisings. Jamoussi
& Gassab (2011) demonstrates that unemployment in the region and
especially in Tunisia (estimated by the International Labour Organiza-
tion at 42.57% in 2011) is a structural problem which became even more
pronounced after the uprisings, but which was not caused by these upris-
ings. Achcar (2013) argues that the uprisings across the region broke
out mainly because of widespread unemployment and underemployment
which affected both the middle and lower classes (el-Meehy, 2013).
The structural problem of youth unemployment in North Africa can be
linked to the difficulties of planning for a family life without income.
2 On the cyclical use of public employment for political purposes, a key manipulation
tool of powerholders everywhere, see, for instance, Tepe and Vanhuysse (2009, 2013,
2014).
As the African Development Bank (AFDB, 2012) reports, Tunisia was

already experiencing tourism reduction and the effects of the Libyan and
the European economic crisis well before the revolution, with a nega-
tive impact on its rate of employment (Tsourapas, 2013). It should be
highlighted that although Morocco has not undergone a radical political-
institutional change, it has experienced considerable upheaval in 2011,
largely for the same reasons as Tunisia (Chomiak & Entelis, 2011),
with the movement of unemployed graduates leading the protests. Thus,
widespread unemployment is not the product of the Arab Spring, but
rather one of its main causes. Fewer young people chose to start new
families without financial stability.
Another important element is the NEET rate—people Not in Employ-
ment nor Education, or Training (OECD, 2017). An interesting parallel
can be drawn between the Maghreb and the northern bank of the
Mediterranean, such as Italy. Although the political outcomes are unlikely
to be the same given the considerable differences between authoritarian
and democratic political systems, the Italian case is revealing of a broader
trend related to economic instability and lack of opportunities for young
people. Youth unemployment in Italy was 42.7% in 2014 and decreased
to 34.7% in 2017, making it comparable to its North African neighbours.
The rise of populism and extremist parties is an indicator of profound
dissatisfaction with a status quo where unemployment, underemployment
and precarity dominate the labour market. Unlike Tunisia and Morocco,
the population in much richer, more democratic Italy is rapidly ageing,
but Italy and Tunisia are in the same range of NEET percentage: 37% in
Italy versus 36% in Tunisia and 21% in Morocco (World Bank, 2016).
Despite different socio-political conditions, we register a fertility rate
decrease in Morocco and Italy, but a slight increase in Tunisia since
2011, the year of the revolution. Thus, blaming the uprisings or the
‘youth bulge’ seems misplaced. Changes in demography do have an
impact on political choices, but the exclusive focus on countries’ age
structure should be challenged. It would be more useful to highlight
young people’s perceptions of empowerment or uselessness. A society
in which most people are young, educated and unemployed produces
specific political consequences. Young Moroccans and Tunisians today are
better educated than the previous generations, having benefitted from the
expansion of mass education and exposure to a global culture, creating a
“revolution of aspirations” (Malik & Awadallah, 2013: 296). There is
an “on-going generational struggle for inclusion to have access to better
living conditions, better employment and mobility” (Malik & Awadallah,
2013: 296). Building on Gurr’s work, Fargues (2017: 2) argues that

the logic of relative deprivation is a strong drive for revolution and can
motivate international migration.
The OECD (2017) shows that 30.28% of Moroccan ‘advanced’
educated people were unemployed in 2003. In the same year, Moroccan
‘basic’ educated people were unemployed at 14.5%. Paradoxically, in
Morocco, the more literate people are, the less likely they are to find
a job (The Economist, 2013: 3). In Tunisia, the situation is similar to
Morocco’s. Unemployment rates are higher among university graduates
(Honwana, 2013). Poverty has fallen across the Maghreb, but inequalities
and unemployment persist: “sadly, for Tunisia, with its relatively well-
schooled young population, unemployment has been stubbornly large,
particularly for women (22%), recent university graduates (31.2%), school
leavers and other youth (31.8%). Ensuring equal access to economic
opportunities is a priority for the new government in Tunisia, as with
other governments across the region” (World Bank, 2016).
While young people were told that education was the way to a better
life, reality is a constant reminder that for many of them this is not
the case. The political repercussions of this ‘expectations gap’ have been
significant and are likely to remain so in the near future. Boughzala
and Kouki (2003) argue that unemployment persistence in countries like
Tunisia is not only caused by labour market rigidities and by popula-
tion growth, but also by the size of the informal sector and low levels
of investment within the formal sector and in public infrastructure and
services. According to Malik and Awadallah (2013), “the political system
has been unable to find a recipe to create what can be termed as ‘good’
and reasonably secure jobs. For instance, the public agencies responsible
for granting subsidized credit to small entrepreneurs and encouraging
growth in this sector were often ineffective” (el-Meehy, 2013: 8). This
is because authoritarianism does not genuinely ‘liberalize’ markets and
networks of privilege are created between private businesses and political
elites. In any case, the absence of opportunities drives young people to
make alternative choices. Many tend to opt out of the job market alto-
gether, particularly young women. These young women often tend to see
marriage as a way out of the family home, but face difficulties in finding
suitable young men with stable and reasonably well-paid jobs.
Therefore, many young men and women make their livelihood in the
informal sector and/or the illegal economy (The Economist, 2013: 4).
It is not only relevant to emphasize the formality or informality of jobs
per se, but also the formality or informality of the job-seeking process,
whereby institutions are bypassed in favour of patronage links (wasta in
Arabic). Similar dynamics take place also in more developed economies
and more democratic political systems (see e.g. Facchini, 2017 on Italy).
In Morocco, “networks matter intergenerationally for finding employ-
ment. All else being equal, the chance of a worker holding a formal job in
Morocco increases significantly if his or her father also has a formal job”
(Gatti et al., 2014: 20).
Job market data for Morocco and Tunisia are fuzzy. In both cases, we
do not know the true percentage of young people voluntarily choosing
the informal sector. Quillen (2017: 31) reports that from 2011 to 2015
the number of people employed in the informal sector jumped from 28%
to more than 32%, topping 1 million workers in 2015, and that the
parallel economy accounted for as much as 38% of Tunisia’s GDP in 2013.
According to Merouani et al. (2017), there can be strong reasons for
young people to choose the informal job sector, e.g. higher incomes and
more time flexibility. The issue is to understand whether people choose
informal jobs as a last resort or not. Even though highly educated people
are more likely to be insured, the same people often choose to work in the
informal sector. Ultimately, “Moroccan youth working in informal jobs
reported being significantly less satisfied than youth working in formal
jobs” (Gatti et al., 2014). Interestingly, if the informal sector is a curse
for the economy of a country, it can also be a blessing for poor people
who could not survive otherwise. That said, the informal sector certainly
discourages youth in the Mediterranean region in building new families
or leave the family home because precariousness rules the way in which
they find or hold on to a job.
4 Waithood
Another crucial factor influencing the fertility rate across North Africa
can be labelled the ‘waithood effect’ (Dhillon & Yussuf, 2009), as many
young adults in each cohort entering the labour market cannot find stable
jobs. As Malik and Awadallah (2013: 309) explain: “the future of the
Middle East crucially depends on whether it can convert this youthful
transition into a productive transition”. The economic prospects of large
sectors of North African youth have not changed significantly since the
uprisings. In fact, high unemployment, lack of social mobility and absence
of hope remain the most significant problems according to their own
citizens (Abbott & Teti, 2017). Many young men and women live in
a permanent state of waithood, simply waiting for life to happen. Inter-
estingly, Honwana (2013) explains that the concept of waithood today
can be extended to young people tout court, and not only to MENA
countries’ youth. Honwana considers that ‘youth’ is shaped by society’s
expectations, such as economic independence and family building. But
such expectations are difficult to meet because the social contract between
state and citizens is broken and the socioeconomic system is ‘rigged’.
Young people’s inability to reach these goals is perceived to be the
outcome of contemporary neoliberal dynamics, which both Tunisia and
Morocco are incapable of exiting. In an ‘optimistic scenario’, according
to Honwana, such a socioeconomic context could push young people
to challenge the system and attempt to free themselves from their wait-
hood condition. Young people are not passively waiting for change:
they are reinventing their survival in non-socially conventional ways.
“Waithood represents the contradiction of modernity, in which young
people’s opportunities and expectations are simultaneously broadened
and constrained” (Honwana, 2013: n.p.). However, the many localized
loci of activism and ‘youth escapism’ in Tunisia and Morocco do not seem
to have the capacity to generate a national widespread momentum for
radical economic change (Hanieh, 2015).
In Tunisia, as Muldering (2013: 3) argues: “the most basic of soci-
etal contracts—that children will one day grow up, begin to contribute
productively to society, and then raise families of their own—has been
broken for an entire generation of youth in the Arab world trapped in
a liminal period: waithood”. Kovaceva et al. (2018: 10) point out that
actual waiting is longer for women than for men in North Africa (but see
Pontiggia 2016 on young men). In Morocco too, waithood is a charac-
teristic of youth. According to a SAHWA national case study, we observe
that Moroccan youth are politically sensitive, but not active in the public
sphere for sure. “This could be explained by the weak impact of educa-
tion and employment policies on knowledge, the importance of virtual
and alternative spaces for observing youth practices and giving them new
opportunities, and the lack of confidence in institutions and migration
alike. Young people’s representations, in the post-2011 context, are thus
directed inwardly, more towards personal success than collective actions”
(Aït Mous, 2016: n.p.). According to Aït Mous though, we have to
be mindful of the fact that youth in Morocco is not a homogeneous
group. There are huge differences between rural and urban areas, women
and men and social classes. The Moroccan Government has attempted
to be proactive in tackling waithood by both protecting youth from
being engaged in work too early (minimum work age raised from 12
to 15 years) and promoting youth participation in politics (voting age
lowered from 20 to 18 years) (Aït Mous, 2016). However, youth partic-
ipation in politics is low and raising the working age has not mattered
much in a country where illegal work is widespread. What matters to
young people is achieving labour market conditions that deliver a fair
living. If entrepreneurship was deemed the ‘magical solution’, the reality
is that the informal economy is still one of the most important sources
of income for young people. Morocco creates more than 40,000 units
of informal jobs every year (Boukhriss, 2016). For Moroccan women,
work is also not emancipatory, because most of the time, they work
until they find a husband. Finally, state-sponsored programmes do not
seem to deliver the changes needed. For instance, the 2006 Moukalawati
(My Firm) programme aimed at reducing administrative procedures
and facilitating access credit in order to boost private entrepreneurship.
However, the programme did not succeed, because credit was not easily
obtained and, at the same time, entrepreneurs in Morocco complained
that prospective employees did not have the skills required because the
educational system does not prepare young people sufficiently and it lacks
coordination in promoting entrepreneurship. One of the effects of the
waithood is also a loss of interest and trust in politics. Fargues (2017) links
waithood to migration, since relative deprivation makes young people
particularly keen on leaving their birth country to find opportunities
abroad. As Fargues (2017: 3) argues, demographic change is a key contex-
tual or ‘predisposing’ factor for both migration and revolt: “a lack of
opportunities combined with a demographic bulge among the young
accounts for many migratory and political processes at play in the Arab
world today”.
5 Migration
Given the high unemployment rates and the inability to fulfil their poten-
tial, many young people opt for emigration when possible. While both
Tunisia and Morocco have long exported their labour force, it was
initially assumed that it was a price to pay before economic develop-
ment kicked in at home. Migrants were considered as net contributors
to the country’s development because they would send remittances home
and contribute to domestic economic growth by boosting household

spending. Economic growth, however, either stagnated or benefited only
the few selected, with remittances simply serving to fill the vacuum of
decreasing state spending on services. In a context of slow or unequal
growth, emigration remains a priority for many young people in both
Morocco and Tunisia because they see very few economic opportunities
at home (Abbott & Teti, 2017). However, emigration has considerably
changed over time as the issue has been ‘securitized’ in Europe, the US
and Canada, the countries of choice for the clear majority of potential
migrants from North Africa (although many Tunisians also made their
way to Qaddhafi-led Libya). The closure of borders and the increasing
difficulties in accessing legal migration—reserved only for the selected,
connected and educated few—have pushed many thousands into the arms
of human traffickers, boosting the number of ‘illegals’. Precise numbers
are notoriously difficult to obtain, but Italy, for instance, received 4500
‘illegal’ Tunisians in 2017 alone. Spain, for its part, detected 22,900
people in 2017 coming via Morocco or Algeria. In any case, changes
in migratory policies on the part of receiving countries have led to more
young people being ‘confined’ at home. Migration to the Gulf States has
not been able to compensate for the loss of widespread and open access
to Europe.
This has far-reaching political implications. Gubert and Nordman
(2009) argue that while the Gulf region was the natural destination
for many Mashreqi citizens, Europe—and Libya before 2011—was the
favourite destination for Maghrebi migrants. Gubert and Nordman
(2009: 3) claim that the migration issue has always been present in the
Moroccan and Tunisian political debate, particularly in Morocco, where
emigration is considered as a form of export to be promoted for the
benefit of the country. Moreover, Moroccans are the most numerous in
Europe. The authors show that the push factors for massive migration
from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia are both GDP per capita and demo-
graphic pressures. In the first case, GDP exerts a push effect in particular
for low-educated workers who need to overcome poverty constraints in
order to afford the fixed costs of migration. The second push factor—
the demographic pressure—expressed itself in the ‘brain drain’ of the
most educated people. A crucial indicator here is migration pressure,
defined as “excess domestic labour supply in the presence of negative
per capita income differences with other countries” (Groenwold et al.,
2016: 4). Bruni and Venturini (1995) make a distinction between migra-
tion pressure and actual migration, namely between the macro-level and
the micro-level phenomenon. While migration pressure is about the
macroeconomic level, actual migration depends on “the propensity of
an individual to migrate, i.e. the probability that an individual willing to
migrate will indeed migrate” (Groenwold et al., 2016: 4).
Tunisia has always had a migration policy based on two main prin-
ciples: encouraging Tunisians to emigrate and checking on Tunisians
abroad. Natter (2015) analyses Tunisian migration after the Arab Spring
and assesses that the revolution had three main effects on migration.
First, the absence of Tunisian border checks in 2011 allowed a consis-
tent non-controlled flow of Tunisians to reach Europe. Second and most
crucially, Tunisia experienced massive immigration from Libya after the
fall of Gaddafi. For Tunisia, which had not experienced high immigra-
tion since colonial times, this prompted immediate practical challenges of
accommodation, health care and food provision, and led to new migra-
tion and asylum laws (Natter, 2015: 2). Recent immigration from Libya
to Tunisia has been strictly limited though. Tunisia acquired the status of
a transit country, so that Libyans are allowed into the country only if they
can prove their exit. Third, the democratization process suddenly made
Tunisia attractive to Western civil society activists and NGOs.
In 2012, Tunisian emigrants accounted for 11% of the total Tunisian
population (Natter, 2015: 2). What changed over time in terms of migra-
tion flows is their composition. During the 1990s, most Tunisian migrants
were low-skilled workers, but today the trend is for young graduates to
leave (Natter, 2015). Another new trend is the influx of migrants from
sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia, although total numbers are small (Natter,
2015: 3). Recently, Tunisia has had to enforce immigration policies in
reaction to the securitization of the issue by its European partners in the
early 2000s. In fact, between 2003 and 2010, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria,
Libya and Mauritania adopted controversial laws on immigration, emigra-
tion and smuggling, which “targeted transit and penalized irregular exit”
(Perrin, 2016: 5), rather than regulating migration fluxes, but were badly
implemented.
In the hands of Ben Ali, the Tunisian law of 2004, which was initially
intended to combat human traffickers, became a powerful tool both to
meet EU needs and to extend control over Tunisian society, particularly
over young people. The Arab Spring uprising did not produce the changes
that young people might have expected. Quite the opposite: young people
became Tunisia’s first problem because they were and are perceived to go
hand in hand with violence, crime, terrorism, revolution, unemployment
and migration (International Alert, 2015). In 2012, Islamist Party leader
Rashid Ghannouchi declared that Tunisia should stop to “give as a gift”
its graduates to Europe. However, the reality is that very poor socioeco-
nomic prospects for many young Tunisians push them to seek a different
life outside the country. Tunisian emigration will likely continue at high
levels, driven by political discontent and economic precariousness (Natter,
2015: 14).
Interestingly, migration policies today are used as a commodity to
maintain and (re)negotiate relations with the European Union and read-
dress the balance of power. The Mobility Partnership promoted by the
European Union “are unattractive to Arab leaders in their current form,
and migration will most likely continue with or without such a manage-
ment tool” (Fargues & Fandrich, 2012: 12; see also Groenwold et al.,
2016: 6).
6 Do Morocco and Tunisia Face

a Youth-Related Crisis Nowadays?
The socio-economic and political crises that Tunisia and Morocco expe-
rience do concern the young, but the youth themselves have little agency
in this. After the Arab uprisings, women and youth should have become
the focus of governments’ resource and energy investments, but this did
not happen. Moroccan and Tunisian youth began organizing and creating
social movements to demand the actual implementation of the changes
promised: “These movements reveal new modes of action, new practices
and new representations that these social groups have developed in rela-
tion to their societies, authorities (…) and to the future” (Kadri, 2014: 1).
New movements growing out of youth’s marginalization, feelings of
injustice and lack of recognition are reshaping Moroccan and North
African societies, as civil society actors are mushrooming. Young people
today are more concerned with economic reforms than the previous
generations (Kadri, 2014). This has significant repercussions on the polit-
ical system because ‘new values’ are being injected into it. According to
an Anna Lindh Foundation report (2014), the Tunisian context has been
rapidly changing, with an increasing number of associations. The 2013
International Alert Report argues that Tunisia is now at a delicate junc-
ture: after the uprising, the Tunisian political context is far from being
cohesive and efficient. Religious and regional divides reinforce people’s

perception of the Arab Spring’s failure and Tunisian youth is not satisfied
with the post-revolutionary setting. It is therefore a time of contradictory
trends with young people still mobilizing to obtain the changes they had
demanded in 2011, but still plagued by political inertia and economic
difficulties, which make many young people opt for emigration.
As Urdal (2006) notes, youth can be both a resource and a danger
in the context of a fragile economy. However, youth bulges represent a
challenge that government has to address by providing opportunities for
youth to participate in education, in the labour market and in governance.
This brings the analysis back to the issues of frustrated expectations and
political responses to such frustrations. Bricker and Foley (2013: 179)
argue that the mere presence of a ‘youth bulge’ is not enough to generate
violence; the real challenge these countries face today is the transition
of youth into the labour market, regardless of their education level and
total numbers. Bricker and Foley (2013) argue that while Tunisia had
an above average Youth Risk Factor (the ratio of the young to the total
labour force), its youth bulge score remained average, indicating the mere
presence of young people or the size of older populations was not a main
reason for the unrest (ibid.: 189).
As the MENA market cannot absorb all the job seekers, frustration can
turn to political violence. At the same time, violent upheaval also depends
on the level of economic crisis, the youth’s education, the presence or lack
of democracy and the geographic position. Urdal (2006: 613) observes
a difference in behaviour among rural and urban youth cohorts and
“youth often constitute a disproportionately large part of rural-to-urban
migrants; hence, in the face of large youth cohorts, strong urbanization
may be expected to lead to an extraordinary crowding of youth in urban
centres, potentially increasing the risk of political violence”. Binzel and
Carvalho (2016) argue that religion is useful (and maybe crucial) to
relieve frustration and marginalization (see also Skirbekk and Navarro,
this volume). Islam is the best tool for young Egyptians to cope with
their unmet expectations because it represents a safe space and can be
then employed to make sense of one’s situation to eventually provide the
symbols and language for political and social mobilization. Although reli-
gion should not be conflated with extremism, such conditions can in part
explain the growth and continued appeal of political Islam in all its forms,
even violent ones (Merone, 2015).
In short, there is indeed a youth-related crisis in both Tunisia and

Morocco despite the demographic changes that have taken place, but the
problem is not the greater share of younger people in the distribution of
the population. There is no demographic explosion of young people. The
real issues are linked to the inability of political institutions to respond to
socio-economic challenges. The absence of a strong labour market, the
inability to relieve pressure through emigration and an unequal distribu-
tion of wealth negatively affect young people. Before the uprising, the
Gini index was stable, but it proved to be unreliable in the light of the
revolutions. Wealth inequality may be much higher and more socially
divisive, but harder to detect than expenditure inequality, especially in
developing MENA (MENA Economic Monitor, 2015: 17).
Despite the similarities in the reasons for the uprisings, the institu-
tional trajectories differed among MENA countries. In fact, the impact of
the ‘Spring’ in Tunisia and Morocco was very different when it comes
to the management of the protests and the outcome of the uprising
itself. Mohammad VI of Morocco knew how to channel the explosive
energy in the streets into more moderate demonstrations and initiated
reforms pre-empting further popular demands. As Storm (2012: 119)
highlights: “at no point, the situation spiralled out of control, rather, the
monarchy stayed firmly in command, and even managed to utilize the
Arab Spring protests to its own advantage by overseeing the introduction
of a new constitution”. In other words, it did not fundamentally alter the
balance of power in favour of elected officials. Thus, the king managed
to marginalize the opposition and maintain the control of the country
(Berg & Rossi-Doria, 2015). Conversely, in Tunisia, the uprisings broke
the previous authoritarian political system and allowed political actors to
build a democratic one, which was consolidated in 2014 with the approval
of a new democratic liberal constitution.
As already highlighted, participants to the uprisings were not neces-
sarily ‘democracy-driven’ but were more ‘economy-driven’. When asked
to rank the top two reasons for the uprisings, both Moroccan and
Tunisian citizens mentioned the economy as number one and corrup-
tion as number two with the state of the political system farther down
the list (Beissinger et al., 2011; Teti et al., 2018). In addition, they were
not members of organized associations and parties, they were rather ordi-
nary citizens—many of them religious and not all of them marginalized
or disadvantaged people. The economic aspect of the uprisings is indeed
connected to changes in the population and Achcar (2013: 12) attributes
the low GDP level to an “exceptionally rapid demographic growth”

during the period between the 1970s and the 1990s. Later, demographic
growth among North African countries stabilized and even decreased, in
the period at the end of 1990s and the beginning of 2010, suggesting
that the more recent economic crisis might have been too quickly pinned
on the youth bulge when in fact the problems are structural.
7 Consequences of Demographic Changes

for Regime Stability and Legitimacy
The impact demographic change has had on regime stability and legiti-
macy differs in Morocco and Tunisia. Morocco managed to defuse the
revolutionary challenge through cosmetic reforms and minor conces-
sions. But complicated economic conditions remain even if the country
fares better than its revolutionary neighbour in the post-uprising period.
In Tunisia, the whole political system has been changed, but political
reforms might not be sufficient to spur growth and reduce unemploy-
ment. They are perceived as a compromise between old and the post-
revolutionary elites to the detriment of the wider population (Boukhars,
2017; Marzouki, 2015; Merone, 2015). Clawson (2009: 1) writes that
the MENA population today is undergoing a “demographic transition”
which potentially carries “the opportunity from much of the population
being of working age with a low burden for caring for the youth and
elderly; then, in coming decades, the opportunity of increased capital
from the savings of middle-aged workers preparing for retirement”. Yet,
if governments do not create enough jobs to make youth’s energies
converge in the labour market, the optimistic scenario is unlikely to occur.
Clawson (2009: 4) calls youth unemployment and the retirement hope
the “twin challenges” MENA governments must face today.
However, the traditional policy response to these “twin challenges” is
not working. The political trend is to get youth ‘ready’ for the job market
by enhancing their skills and delaying young people’s professional access.
This dynamic can be useful in the short term, but it cannot last and it
does not lead to development. Malik and Awadallah (2013) argue that
the most significant factor preventing the absorption of the youth into
the labour market over time is the inability to create a large and innova-
tive private sector that could gradually replace the state in terms of job
creation. But problematic political conditions prevent the private sector
from expanding. Malik and Awadallah (2013) suggest that neither the
oil sector nor the governments can absorb the huge mass of unemployed
youth and these two sectors have been unable to do so for quite some
time. It follows that the Arab world should have focused on giving an
impulse to the manufacturing sector, as many Asian and Latin American
countries did, to satisfy the needs of a growing population. The inability
and unwillingness to do so should not be blamed primarily on a growing
population and the ‘youth bulge’. The explanations for such failure are to
be found in the deeply divided political environment across the region,
the self-serving authoritarianism of the leadership in place and the narrow
interests of the rising bourgeoisie to exploit rents rather than investing in
expanding the economy through private enterprise. While the Arab upris-
ings seemed to challenge both Arab divisions and authoritarian practices,
the post-uprisings Arab world does not seem to have changed much. If
anything, there is greater chaos, greater insecurity and therefore greater
inability to deal with the problem of socioeconomic development even in
countries that democratized such as Tunisia.
In addition to the lack of regional economic integration, there is the
problem of ruling elites who are unwilling and unable to provide mean-
ingful change. The absence of accountability and the very limited role of
civil society in economic policymaking undermine most efforts of reform
(Cavatorta & Rivetti, 2018). In fact, vested interests tend to prevail to
avoid upsetting the political system: “There is growing realization in the
wake of recent Arab revolts that the status quo is unsustainable and that
governance system need to be more responsive to citizens” (Malik &
Awadallah, 2013: 309). Heydemann’s work on corrupt networks (2004)
demonstrates that liberalizing policies simply resulted in the transfer of
public assets into private hands without any real benefit for the popula-
tion at large. This resulted in the creation of private monopolies that did
not contribute to growth and therefore employment—the outcome of a
very deliberate policy of ensuring that key social actors would continue to
support authoritarianism (Dillman, 2001). As Acemoglu and Robinson
(2012) argue, a nation’s wealth or poverty is based on the inclusiveness
of political and economic institutions. What is crucial is the extrac-
tive nature of institutions: both economic and political institutions are
resource-extractive and drain nations’ wealth. The increasing extractive-
ness of North African regimes over time is one reason for, the Arab Spring
occurred (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012).
It is crucial in economic reforms to actively involve young people, but
this would provide them with the means to have a genuine political voice,
which might disrupt the networks of patronage still in place despite the
move away from authoritarianism. As the political and individual values of
the youth are increasingly diverging from those of previous generations
in favour of more liberalism in both politics and economy. Paciello et al.
(2016) find that youth policy in Tunisia has worsened after the fall of Ben
Ali, as social conflicts caused by rising inequalities and a failed develop-
ment model are increasingly reduced to a question of juvenile extremists
and to Islamist/non-Islamist cultural divides, which are dealt with using
“a mix of repression and the preaching of tolerance through educational
programs”.
8 Conclusions
Instead of focusing on supposed ‘youth bulges’ or youth extremism or
youth apathy when explaining the crisis of the Arab world, it is more
fruitful to analyse the structural problems—political and economic—that
have led to uprisings and demands for change. As Inayatullah (2016)
notes, it is better to look at the young population in Morocco and Tunisia
both as a challenge and as an opportunity for their governments. What
makes a difference is how political and economic institutions operate, as
this has tremendous repercussion on the private choices and public stances
of ordinary citizens. Radical policy changes are needed in the region to
ensure that the youth does not remain a constant source of problems and
worry, but despite the 2011 uprisings such changes have not been imple-
mented. It is clear that the presence of active, educated and jobless—or at
best precariously employed young people—can become a further source
of destabilization for an already economically struggling country. Many
young Moroccans and Tunisians cannot meet such social expectations
linked to family, status and consumption. Forming families and earning
a good life is impossible for the majority, leading to dissatisfaction, a
feeling of uselessness and desire to escape through emigration. Inter-
estingly, these feelings and grievances are not confined to the Maghreb
region, suggesting that structural problems linked to the economic system
in place are to blame. As we observed in the 2018 municipal elections
in Tunisia, youth participation was dramatically low and this trend must
be rapidly inverted to put youth potential at the core of the policies, as
observed by the NGO Mourakiboun (Delmas, 2018), but this is unlikely
to occur in a worsening economic environment.
Inayatullah (2016) reflects on the opportunities of demographic

change in the MENA region in terms of four future scenarios in 2050.
In the first scenario, the development of a peer-to-peer sharing economy
and cyber cooperatives would bring governments and economies to work
together resulting in greater development. This is unlikely to occur given
the existing structural problems and inequalities that plague Tunisia and
Morocco. In addition, the concentration of wealth coincides with polit-
ical power, preventing most likely the creation of a larger middle-class.
The second scenario foresees unemployed and disempowered youth stuck
in an economic system where the human labour is substituted by auto-
mated machines. The outcome of this scenario is the break of social links,
especially the intergenerational one. In the third scenario, ‘digital’ natives
and the elderly do not communicate at all: they live in different techno-
cultural enclaves. This might indeed occur, but it would simply be a social
division with the economic problems remaining and the (in)ability of the
labour market to absorb young people as unchanged. In the last scenario,
Inayatullah (2016: 30) foresees the end of the capitalist system, where
the youth bulge is no longer a security threat: “in a post-capitalist society
where technology allows for survival for all, fighting over scarce resources
becomes a non-issue”. Inayatullah’s predictions about MENA youth are
strictly linked to technological revolutions, namely digital, genomics,
manufacturing and energy-based. The economy would increasingly move
to a “peer-to-peer cooperative and sharing economies challenging tradi-
tional capitalism” (Inayatullah, 2016). More prosaically, it appears that
without a fundamental rethink of the role of the state in the economy
as both an employer and a legislator limiting the reach of large busi-
ness interests and in fostering citizens’ rights, the Tunisian and Moroccan
economies are destined to muddle through. In this case, demographic
change might indeed coincide with greater public liberties and even full
democratization, but from an economic perspective not much would
change for the vast majority of the young citizens.
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holder.
CHAPTER 11
It Is All About the Numbers of Immigrants:

Population and Politics in Australia and New
Zealand
Peter McDonald and Andrew Markus

P. McDonald (B)
Emeritus Professor of Demography, The Australian National University,
Canberra, ACT, Australia
e-mail: Peter.McDonald@anu.edu.au
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
A. Markus
Emeritus Professor, School of Philosophical, Historical and International
Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_11
276 P. MCDONALD AND A. MARKUS
1 Introduction: Recent Demographic

Trends in Australia and New Zealand
Australia’s rate of population growth was relatively constant from 1992 to
2005, averaging about 1.2% per annum. Subsequently, its rate of growth
shifted to a higher plane, averaging 1.7% in the decade, 2007 and 2016.
The rate of population growth in New Zealand has fluctuated much more
widely being as low as 0.5% in 1999 and 2000 and in 2011–2012, but as
high as 2.2% in 2016 (Fig. 1). In recent years, both countries have had
population growth rates that are on the high end among OECD countries
(UNPD, 2017). In both countries, the annual rate of natural increase has
fallen from 1992 to 2016, from 0.9% to 0.6% in New Zealand and from
0.8% to 0.6% in Australia.
In both countries, the wide fluctuations in the rate of population
growth after 1992 have been due almost entirely to changes in rate of
Fig. 1 Age pyramids in 1990–2020–2040 in Australia and New Zealand (Note

Males are to the left [black], females to the right [grey]. Source Computations
by Richard Cincotta)
11 IT IS ALL ABOUT THE NUMBERS OF IMMIGRANTS … 277
international migration. Political debate has therefore been focused upon

levels of migration except for a short period in the early 2000s, when
declining fertility was a topic of political conversation in Australia (see
Fig. A.11.1 in the online appendix for details).
As debate about population growth in the two countries has been
confined largely to changes in the level of international migration, this
chapter focuses on the politics of international migration. Other issues
that have drawn attention but with less controversy include population
distribution, population ageing and ethnic composition. In relation to
population distribution, the recent debate is about the concentration of
10 million of Australia’s 25 million population in just two cities—Sydney
and Melbourne. Australia’s two largest cities have grown rapidly on the
back of strong labour demand. Melbourne’s growth has been particu-
larly rapid in recent times, growing at around 2.5% per annum. Not only
does Melbourne attract large numbers of international migrants, it expe-
riences net positive migration from its hinterland in the State of Victoria
and from every other state and territory in Australia. Sydney, in contrast,
experiences a net loss to the rest of Australia from internal migration but
slightly higher international migration than Melbourne (ABS, 2019). The
current debate on population distribution is considered at the end of the
chapter.
If present demographic trends continue, Australia and New Zealand
will be two of the youngest countries in the OECD with their age struc-
tures still concentrated in the working ages long into the future (see
the age pyramids in Fig. 1). If net international migration continues at
200,000 per annum and the fertility rate remains around 1.8 births per
woman, 20.5% of the Australian population will be aged 65 years and
over in 2051, a level below that applying today in some OECD countries
(McDonald, 2018a). The age composition of Australia and New Zealand
in 2020 was not typical of other OECD countries with the centre of
gravity of the distribution still clearly in the lower half of the pyramids
and is projected to remain relatively young for the year 2040.
Population ageing is an important issue in Australia and New Zealand
but the capacity to deal with its consequences is better than in most
other higher-income countries (in contrast to other OECD countries,
see Vanhuysse & Goerres, 2012). In the past decade in Australia, the
labour force has been growing faster than the population. The essential
issue with the ageing of the population is not the rate of growth of the
older population but the rate of growth of per capita government expen-
diture on aged persons. In Australia, between 1980 and 2010, per capita
public expenditure on health for persons aged 75 and over increased six
times in real terms while the population aged 75 and over increased
less than three times (Australian National Transfer Accounts). Popula-
tion ageing enters political debate about population mainly through the
deflating impact that international migration has upon population ageing
and, hence, upon the growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per
capita (Commonwealth of Australia, 2018; McDonald & Temple, 2009,
2010, 2014).
Australia and New Zealand both have very high and increasing propor-
tions of their populations born in another country. In the case of New
Zealand, at the 2013 Census, 25% of the population was born outside of
New Zealand, compared to 19% in 2001. For Australia, the equivalent
percentage at the 2016 Census was 27% compared to 23% in 2001. Over
15% of New Zealand’s citizens live in another country with 13% of its
citizens living in Australia.
There has been some debate about the extent to which international
migration alters the ethnic composition of the two countries, but this
debate does not extend to the fertility rates of international migrants.
On average, the fertility rates of immigrants have been very similar to
those of the native-born population. This is largely because immigrants
to Australia and New Zealand are skewed to the skilled, more highly
educated end, different from many European countries that took up
refugees in large numbers on humanitarian grounds with larger shares of
low-skilled individuals. Changes in the ethnic composition of births are
not due to differences in fertility rates across ethnic groups but due to the
young age distribution of immigrants. Immigrants to Australia and New
Zealand have their children soon after they arrive (McDonald, 2018b).
In 2016, about 25% of all births in Australia had at least one parent born
in Asia. Furthermore, the increment to the non-Australian-born popula-
tion between 2011 and 2016 was 100% Asian because the numbers of
persons born in most European-source countries in Australia, except the
UK, are declining as deaths exceed new arrivals. Thus, the composition
of the Australian population is shifting relatively rapidly towards Asian-
origin countries. In 2006, 5.5% of the Australian population had been
born in Asia; in 2016, this percentage had risen to 13.5% (McDonald,
2019). Political debate related to the origins of the Australian population
and attitudes and opinions are discussed below.
The chapter begins with a historical review of population and politics

from the 1940s to 1991. This is followed by analysis of formal immigra-
tion trends and policies from 1991 onwards and political debate about
these policies. As irregular migration has been an important aspect of
Australian politics since 1991, the politics surrounding irregular migration
are then discussed. Then, the chapter examines public opinion on popula-
tion and migration in Australia based on opinion polls. The chapter ends
with a review of contemporary opinion on population policy, still fluid in
the context of the 2019 federal election.
2 Background: The Period to 1991

During the first 200 years following the European settlement of the
Australian colonies, concern arose from time to time about the viability of
Australia and New Zealand given their small populations. Assisted migra-
tion programmes began in the 1830s, there was a royal commission into
the decline of the birth rate in 1903, and, in the 1930s, the phrase ‘pop-
ulate or perish’ was coined by William Morris Hughes, a former Prime
Minister. Following the Second World War, the population of Australia
was around 8 million and official projections showed it would be still 8
million in 2000 given the relatively low levels of migration and fertility
that had prevailed since the 1930s (Borrie, 1948). In this situation, the
then government of Australia embarked upon a vigorous post-war migra-
tion programme (Calwell, 1949). Later, following the increase of the
birth rate in the 1950s, there was an implicit policy target of two percent
per annum for the rate of population growth, half of which would be
contributed by international migration (APIC, 1977). On average, for the
years 1949 to 1972, this target was met. Nation building was the main
rationale for the post-war migration programme. The levels of annual net
migration to Australia from 1947 onwards are shown in Fig. 2.
The vertical line shown at year 2006 delineates a change in the defi-
nition of the Australian resident population that made it more likely that
temporary migrants would be counted into the population. Prior to 1 July
2006, a person was counted into (or out of) the Australian population
if he/she had been resident (not resident) in Australia for a continuous
period of 12 months. From 1 July 2006, this criterion was changed
to being resident in Australia for a total of 12 months in the previous
16 months, irrespective of any absences during the 16 months.
350,000
300,000
Net MigraƟon: Number
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
0
1947
1951
1955
1959
1963
1967
1971
1975
1979
1983
1987
1991
1995
1999
2003
2007
2011
2015
Year
Fig. 2 Net International Migration to Australia, 1947–2016, numbers (Source

Australian Bureau of Statistics [2019])
In the 1970s, following a quarter of a century of rapid population

growth and with the emergence of the ‘limits to growth’-movement, for
the first time in earnest, voices emerged in opposition to rapid popu-
lation growth and hence, to the size of the migration intake (Betts,
1999). However, not in response to the ‘limits to growth’ argument,
the Australian birth rate fell in the 1970s from its relatively high ‘baby-
boom’ levels to around replacement level and the Australian Government
cut the migration intake in response to worsening economic conditions.
Throughout history, even back into the nineteenth century, migra-
tion intakes were reduced in consequence of economic downturns and
reductions in the demand for labour and boosted in the good times.
3 Fertility as an Object of Policy Since 1991

Falling fertility was one of the main policy issues at the 2004 federal
election at which the main parties had similar but competing policies to
support families with children. The then conservative government won
the election by winning the outer suburban seats in the big cities where
families with children predominate. The policies introduced at the time
provided substantial income support for families with children and a major
subsidy to childcare costs. Subsequently, the total fertility rate rose and
remained well above its 2001 level until 2017. While there is debate about
whether the policy changes stimulated the increase in fertility (McDonald,
2015b), the level of the fertility rate has remained off the political agenda
since the 2004 election.
3.1 The Rationale of Australian Migration Policy

Is Changed—The 1990s
The formal Australian programme of permanent migration is divided into
two streams: the Skilled Stream consisting of people selected on the basis
of their employment skills and the Family Stream that consists of family
members of Australian citizens or permanent residents. In the early 1990s,
the Family Stream, which had little relationship to labour demand, consti-
tuted two-thirds of the permanent migration programme (Department of
Home Affairs, 2018: Table 3.1). Also, in 1991, the unemployment rate of
immigrants was 3.3% points higher than that of the Australian-born popu-
lation (Productivity Commission, 2006: Table 4.7). These circumstances
led the then Labor Government to instigate a major reassessment of
policy towards migration that was in the interests of Australia’s economic
development targeting occupations where skill shortages were impeding
productive investment.
Following a review of the system, two radical changes of direction took
place in 1995. First, the existing points system for the selection of new
permanent residents was revised with the points being determined by the
skill level of the applicant, and entry was limited to those with higher-
level skills as defined by a list of eligible occupations. Points were awarded
for qualifications, work experience, age and English proficiency (Boucher,
2016). Second, in response to the increasing internationalization of the
Australian economy and to assist international companies to move their
workers from country to country, the view was taken that a more compre-
hensive and efficient form of temporary skilled migration was required
(Khoo et al., 2007; Roach, 1995). Thus, temporary migration served
as an incentive for such companies to have a base in Australia. The
permanent migration process and the then existing forms of temporary
migration were slow, cumbersome, sometimes complex and somewhat
unpredictable. Later, the temporary skilled migration scheme provided
a central role for employer sponsorship in the migration programme by
providing a streamlined approach in a market where speed plays an impor-

tant role. Only managers, professionals, para-professional and skilled
trades occupations were included on the list of allowable skilled migra-
tion occupations. Workers without these skills could enter Australia only
as New Zealand citizens (who have had free entry to the Australian labour
market since the early 1980s), as humanitarian migrants or through the
now much more restricted family stream (for more detail, see McDonald,
2015a).
The new policy approach had relatively broad political appeal as
employers were more able to deal with their skill shortages and had a
major role in the selection of at least temporary skilled workers. Unions
also saw the new direction as offering them the opportunity to argue, if
necessary, that there were already sufficient workers available in Australia
in certain occupations and, hence, that these occupations should not be
included on the list of allowable occupations for skilled migration. Since
the mid-1990s, there has been continuing debate in Australia, especially
between employers and unions, about which occupations to include on
the list of occupations eligible for migration, either permanent or tempo-
rary. The temporary skilled migration programme (until 2017 designated
as the ‘457’ visa sub-class), which covers a much wider range of occu-
pations than the permanent skilled programme and, on the margins, is
open to nefarious practices by employers, has been particularly prone to
such debate. Successive governments have dealt with this debate through
relatively frequent independent or parliamentary enquiries into the orga-
nization and operation of the 457 visas.1 This debate about the inclusion
or exclusion of occupations tends to occur mainly at the higher levels of
policymaking and political lobbying rather than at the level of the broader
population, although both major political parties, in tweaking migration
policy, will state that they are doing so in order to prioritize ‘jobs for
Australians’.
3.2 Formal Migration Since 1991

These major policy changes were instigated by a Labor Government soon
before they lost government in 1996 but were operationalized by the
1 See Azarias et al. (2014) for the latest of the independent enquiries and a history of
previous enquiries.
new Coalition Government led by John Howard. The new conserva-

tive government supported the change in policy direction but initially
restricted immigration to a relatively low level (72,000 net in 1997,
Fig. 2). Howard’s opposition to Asian migration expressed in 1988 had
been subject to public criticism before his election in 1996 and had not
been in evidence at the time of the 1996 election. By 1996, his own
middle-class electorate in Sydney had become heavily Asian. The non-
discriminatory foundation of Australian migration policy that came into
being in the 1970s remained in place under the new government and
the conservative Liberal-National Coalition Party has never returned to
the idea of a racially, discriminatory migration programme. Indeed, it
has defended non-discriminatory immigration against the more extreme
right-wing groups that have emerged in the past 20 years (discussed
below).
Importantly, from the inception of the post-war migration programme
in 1947 until today, Australia has had a Department of Immigration
(under various names across time) and a Minister for Immigration.
Although the intake levels in the annual Migration Programme are deter-
mined by the Cabinet with input from many sources, public and private,
the Minister for Immigration and the Department of Immigration have
played a central role in the development of migration policy. This concen-
tration of power over the directions of migration has tended to yield
a more coherent approach to migration than is the case in many other
countries where debate about migration has no centroid where decisions
are taken. It has also helped to generate largely bipartisan support for
migration policy across the two major political parties.
Since 1995, this centralized policy-making has led to the gradual tran-
sition of the permanent and temporary skilled migration programmes,
initially quite separate, into a more integrated system in which perma-
nent migration is most often preceded by a period of temporary residence
and application for permanent residence on-shore by temporary skilled
migrants, international students and even working holiday makers. Thus,
the broad story of policy change in Australia over the past 20 years is
one of movement from a cumbersome, inflexible, untargeted migration
programme to one that is highly flexible based on initial temporary resi-
dence and responsive to shifts in labour demand both in terms of numbers
and occupations. The shift to temporary residence in Australia has meant
that 4.6% of all employed persons in Australia were temporary residents,
excluding New Zealand citizens (ABS, Australian Census and Temporary

Entrants Integrated Dataset, 2016 Census).
Debate about population growth in the two countries is dominated
by debate about the number of immigrants. As is evident from Fig. 2,
annual net international migration increased in the years of the Howard
conservative government from 72,000 in 1997 to 244,000 in 2007. This
occurred without opposition from the Labor Party. In 2008, the first year
of the new Rudd Labor Government, net migration rose to the unprece-
dently high level of 316,000, that is 1.5% of population (see Fig. A.11.2
in the online appendix). This was caused by a sudden increase in the
numbers of international students in the Vocational and Further Educa-
tion sector (53,000 increase in grants in one year from 2007–2008 to
2008–2009) consisting mainly of persons from South Asia taking short
courses in the hope of qualifying for permanent residence in Australia
(Department of Immigration & Border Protection, 2014), aided by
less-than-honest migration agents in South Asia and unscrupulous educa-
tion providers in Australia. This strategy was scotched in February 2010
through a revamp of the skilled migration occupation list. Since then, net
migration has fallen back to an average of around 200,000 per annum
(about 0.8% of population).
Since 2012, the Australian Government has set the Migration
Programme at 190,000 per annum every year, two-thirds being skilled
migrants and one-third being family migrants very largely consisting of
spouses and partners of Australian citizens and permanent residents. On
top of this, there has been an intake of between 13,000 and 22,000
humanitarian immigrants, the highest level being set to accommodate
Syrian and Iraqi refugees in 2016–2017 (ABS, 2019). The 190,000 level
is in the centre of a range that economic-demographic modelling has
shown produces the most favourable effect on the age distribution of the
population defined by the impact of the level of net migration on GDP
per capita (McDonald & Temple, 2009, 2010, 2014).
New Zealand’s skilled permanent and temporary migration policies
have been broadly similar to Australia’s, although certain outcomes differ.
Hawthorne (2011) provides a detailed comparison of the skilled migra-
tion policies of the two countries and the outcomes. At the time to
which she referred the first decade of the twenty-first century, New
Zealand’s skilled entry consisted largely of persons already working in
New Zealand as temporary skilled workers, and the largest source country
was the UK. A smaller percentage of the skilled stream entry in Australia
applied on-shore and consisted mainly of former students. Because of this

emphasis on students, the main source countries were India and China.
New Zealand and Australia also have similar Family and Humanitarian
programmes. In numerical terms, net migration to New Zealand has been
subject to much greater volatility than has been the case for Australia.
While net migration to Australia from 1947 onwards has never been
negative and rarely even close to zero, in New Zealand, negative or near-
zero net migration has been a common occurrence since 1992 (see Fig.
A.11.3 in the online appendix). On the other hand, in 2016, net migra-
tion rose to 1.52% of the total population, a level above any level reached
by Australia since 1991. In recognition of this very high level, the New
Zealand Labor Party introduced a policy to reduce migration by 20,000
to 30,000 to the 2017 election and was duly elected (Trevett, 2017).
The fluctuations in net migration to New Zealand are to a large extent
the result of the number of New Zealand citizens that move to Australia.
Under the long-standing Trans-Tasman agreement, Australian and New
Zealand citizens are free to move between the two countries. At times
when economic conditions are favourable in Australia, migration from
New Zealand to Australia tends to be high. In 2001, Australia moved to
restrict movement from New Zealand by excluding New Zealand citizens
from eligibility for Australian social security benefits and simultaneously
making it difficult for New Zealand citizens to obtain Australian citizen-
ship. Despite this policy shift, New Zealanders moved to Australia in very
large numbers during the economic boom of the 2000s. In September
2016, there were 677,000 New Zealand citizens in Australia, equivalent
to about 15% of the total population of New Zealand. Despite the contin-
uing concerted efforts of the New Zealand Government to convince
the Australian Government to provide New Zealanders in Australia with
Australian citizenship, the Australian Government resisted until July 2017
when a pathway to citizenship was opened to New Zealand citizens of
‘good character’ who had lived in Australia for five years and had an
annual income above $53,900.
4 The Politics of Regular International

Migration in Australia Since 1991
4.1 Discrimination on the Basis of Race
As already observed, the conservative government of Howard trans-
formed both the level and composition of migration to Australia in its
11-year term (1996 to 2007). Despite an earlier objection (1988) by
Howard to the level of migration from Asia, the majority of migrants
during this period came from Asia, especially China and India. These two
countries are by far the main source countries of international students
and the transition from international student to permanent resident (often
via periods on other temporary visa types) has been a major reason for the
high proportion of new permanent residents coming from these coun-
tries. Between 2006 and 2011, 87% of the increment to the overseas-born
population of Australia was Asian-born. This percentage rose to close to
100% in the 2011–2016 period with 59% of the increase in the Asian-born
component of the population coming from China and India (McDonald,
2019).
Upon his rise to Prime Minister in 1996, Howard was confronted
by the election to the House of Representatives of an independent, dis-
endorsed member of his own party, Pauline Hanson, who, for the past
20 years, has attempted to position herself and her One Nation Party as
the voice of the radical right. In her maiden speech in 1996, Hanson
said that Australia was in danger of being “swamped by Asians” (Hanson,
1996).
Howard set out to distance himself and the government from these
views essentially by ignoring Hanson. In his first term of office, Howard
and the then Leader of the Labor Opposition, Kim Beazley, led a
successful bipartisan motion in the Australian Parliament against racial
discrimination and reaffirming support for a non-discriminatory immigra-
tion policy. In 1988, Howard had voted against a similar motion brought
to the parliament by the Hawke Labor Government.
In 2018, organized opposition to Asian migration tends to be confined
to the electorally unpopular, extreme right, especially the Australia First
Party. Being on the fringe, this party expresses its views very forthrightly
calling for the reinstatement of the White Australia Policy and inviting
all non-White Australians to leave Australia permanently (Australia First
Party, 2019). At the 2016 federal election, it did not run any candidates
and, in 2018, its leader ran for the federal seat of Longman (Queensland)
in a by-election and won 0.3% of the vote.
4.2 Environment, Infrastructure and the Economy

The level of immigration in Australia rose during the 2000s because of
very strong labour demand during the long, economic boom that was
centred primarily upon mining development (Fig. 2). In this period, there
was a considerable increase in migration to then mining boom state of
Western Australia while the traditional centres of Australian immigra-
tion, Sydney and Melbourne, continued to receive large numbers. The
opening of new onshore pathways to permanent residence was supported
by both major political parties during this time and net migration from
New Zealand to Australia ballooned reaching a peak of around 40,000 in
one year.
There has been no major increase in unemployment in Australia since
the early 1990s and the country has gone without an economic recession
for over 26 years. Even during the global financial crisis commencing in
late 2008, the Australian economic growth rate never dropped below zero
for two consecutive quarters and the increases in unemployment were
moderate. For the first time in an economic downturn, the Australian
Government did not cut the migration intake and there is a belief in
government circles that that decision coupled with the economic stimuli
put in place by the then Rudd Labor Government saw the country
through the crisis. This perceived success has seen subsequent govern-
ments maintain a relatively high and constant level of migration; that is,
the economic imperative has prevailed in immigration decision-making.
This constancy of migration policy occurred despite occasional blips
along the way. Following the release of official population projections by
the Australian Treasury showing a population of 36 million people by
2050, in October 2009, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd welcomed this
future saying that he believed in a “big Australia” (ABC, 2009). The
broad sentiment was supported by the then Leader of the Opposition
(later, Prime Minister) Malcolm Turnbull, but he added that this result
was good “so long as we have the infrastructure to enable us to live here in
a sustainable way” (ABC, 2009). This statement, echoed by a number of
other commentators at the time, is typical of the tension in the Australian
debate between the negative effects of immigration on infrastructure in
cities and the positive effects on productive investment through facilita-

tion of the entry of skilled labour. The debate received further impetus in
2010, when Julia Gillard, wishing to establish differences between Rudd
and herself in her successful attempt to unseat Rudd as the Labor Prime
Minister, distanced herself from the ‘big Australia’ position (cf. Gordon,
2010). Gillard also launched an attack upon the temporary skilled visa
scheme saying that it was taking the jobs of Australians. When she became
Prime Minister, however, there was substantially no change to migration
policy and there was an essentially bipartisan approach to immigration at
the 2010 federal election.
Since the decline of construction activity in the mining industry, inter-
national migration to Western Australia has fallen away to a low level
and instead has been concentrated heavily on Australia’s two major cities,
Sydney and Melbourne. Both cities, especially Melbourne, have been
experiencing rapid population growth. In 2015–2016, Melbourne had
net positive migration from the rest of the State of Victoria and from
every other state and territory in Australia, besides considerable interna-
tional migration. Its population grew by 120,000 in one year (2.7% per
annum) (McDonald, 2018b). This very high level of growth put pressure
on urban infrastructure, especially on transport and upon the housing
market. Consequently, the anti-migration lobby that has continued to
operate at a low level since the early 1970s has been given new impetus
(ABC, 2019).
Concern has been expressed about the emergence of ‘two Australias’,
Sydney and Melbourne, on one hand, and the rest of Australia on the
other, with Sydney and Melbourne being affluent and Asian and the rest
of the country being non-affluent and non-Asian (Megalogenis, 2017).
However, since Australian federation, Sydney and Melbourne have always
been considered to be different worlds compared with much of the rest
of Australia. This is the reason that the National Party exists—to look
after the interests of ‘country’ people. Continued and very strong support
for multiculturalism with 83–86% agreeing that multiculturalism has been
good for Australia (see discussion below) tends to argue against adding a
new racial dimension to this very long-term political reality.
So far, the relatively high and constant intake of migrants has not
encountered major opposition from the main political parties including,
importantly, the Greens Party, which says little about regular migration.
Even Hanson’s One Nation Party is sitting on the fence in stating in its
aims that migration should take economic investment into account while
not overloading infrastructure or creating unemployment.
The Liberal-National Coalition Government has recently merged
immigration policy with homeland security and border control. Some
policy directions give the strong impression that the border control
authorities wish to subject new immigrants to greater scrutiny from the
security perspective. This includes a proposal to introduce a provisional
permanent residence visa for skilled immigrants—provisional until they
have proven themselves to be good Australians—and a bill to make citi-
zenship much more difficult to obtain. This latter bill proposed an English
test at university entry level as a prerequisite for citizenship. This would
have precluded a very large number of refugees from obtaining citizenship
along with many partners of Australian citizens (Mares, 2017). The bill
was opposed by the Labor Party and was defeated in the Senate. While
these policy directions may not affect the number of people migrating
to Australia because labour demand remains high, it could affect the
quality of the skilled arrivals and be highly discriminatory in relation to
refugees accepted into Australia whose levels of English language profi-
ciency are very often low. By 2020, the Coalition Government appeared
to have moved away from increasing the English language requirement as
a condition of citizenship.
5 The Politics of Irregular

International Migration
In Australia today, the general perception of migration policy is that
it is policy on irregular migration, essentially people arriving by boat
and claiming asylum. The two major political parties and Hanson’s One
Nation Party are in agreement that irregular arrival by boat must be
stopped completely. This is based on a fear that very large numbers will
arrive if the border was open, on the concern that asylum seekers will die
while attempting to reach Australian landfall (and there have been some
very graphic incidences of this), that this route may be used by terror-
ists wishing to infiltrate Australian society, that many people will arrive
who are not political refugees, and that this route serves the interests of
people smugglers and comes at the expense of already assessed refugees
in UNHCR camps around the world. Based on polling, a majority of
Australians are strongly opposed to irregular arrival by boat. The Liberal-
National Coalition ran very heavily upon a ‘stop the boats’ agenda at the
2013 election and considers that this position was an important element
in its resounding victory in that election. Since 2013, the government has
implemented draconian policies that have indeed stopped the boats.
The approach has been to break the people smuggler business model
and research among potential Afghan refugees in Iran has shown that
this goal has been achieved (Abbasi-Shavazi et al., 2017). Before the flow
of boats stopped, boats were intercepted on the high sea and sent back
to Indonesia, sometimes by transferring the occupants to unsinkable life
vessels. While the Indonesian Government expressed objection to this
approach, there is also a degree of acceptance because the Indonesian
Government does not want to deal with large flows of irregular migrants
through its country heading for Australia. Most controversially, asylum
seekers who arrived on Australian territory immediately after the crack-
down were shifted off to processing centres on Manus Island in Papua
New Guinea and on Nauru. The number held offshore rose from 571 to
2,342 from July 2013 to February 2014 (Parliament of Australia, 2016).
Women and children in these groups were gradually moved to Australia
but many men remain in these dire circumstances. The Greens Party has
been largely alone in promoting a softer policy on irregular arrivals by
boat. This has not emerged as a major area of policy debate at the May
2019 federal election. Neither of the major parties wishes to be perceived
by the electorate as soft on irregular arrivals by boat.
In 2018, it emerged that asylum seekers are arriving in large numbers
by plane on tourist visas. Having arrived, they claim asylum and apply for
residence usually on the ground they are unable to practise their religion
in their own country. The largest group are Christians from Malaysia and
China (Administrative Appeals Court, 2019). On claiming asylum, they
are given a bridging visa and allowed to remain in Australia while their
case is being heard. This process can last 2 to 4 years. During this time,
they are permitted to work. As it is relatively well known that there is a
low success rate for these applications and as the people concerned usually
do not employ legal advice, there is a suspicion that this is a strategy for
lower-skilled people to obtain temporary work rights in Australia. Cases
are heard by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for which the caseload
rose from 17,480 in July 2016 to 50,887 in October 2018. As the volume
of cases is clogging up the court system thus extending the stays of the
applicants, it can be expected that some action will be taken to restrict
this activity (Crowe, 2018).
6 Public Opinion on Australia’s

Immigration Policy
There is substantial evidence to indicate that among Western nations
Australia and Canada rank as the most receptive to immigration (Markus,
2012; Reitz, 2011). A major survey conducted between 2012 and 2014
in 142 countries by Gallup World Poll provides scope for comparison
across regions. The aggregated results (see Table A.11.1 in the online
appendix) indicate that support for immigration at current or higher levels
was at 69% in the Oceania region (Australia and New Zealand), 57%
in North America (Canada and the US), and at 38% in Europe (IOM,
2015). The Gallup 2016–2017 Migrant Acceptance Index found that
Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) ranked first and North America
second. In the ranking of 138 countries, Australia ranked seventh (Gallup,
2017).
Questions similar to North American surveys used in Australian polling
provide the basis for cross-country comparison (see Table A.11.2 in the
online appendix). 83% of respondents agreed that ‘immigrants are gener-
ally good for the Australian economy’, while only a minority at 29%
agreed that ‘immigrants take jobs away from people who were born in
Australia’ (ANU Poll, 2015).
The 2016 Lowy Institute Poll, an annual survey with a focus on foreign
policy, found that just 24% of respondents disagreed with the propo-
sition that ‘overall, immigration has a positive impact on the economy
of Australia, while 73 percent agreed’; 25% disagreed with the view
that ‘immigrants strengthen our country because of their hard work and
talents, 72 percent agreed’. A larger proportion, but still a minority at
35%, were in agreement that ‘immigrants take away jobs from other
Australians’ (Oliver, 2016). In 2018, the Scanlon Foundation survey
found agreement with this proposition at 31% (Markus, 2018).
Beginning in 2007, and on an annual basis since 2009, the Scanlon
Foundation has conducted surveys of Australian attitudes to immigration,
cultural diversity and social cohesion. Eleven national surveys have been
conducted, with additional local area and experimental surveys to test the
impact on results of different modes of surveying (Markus, various years).
The Scanlon Foundation surveys include a question which has been a
staple of Australian surveying since 1951, which asks respondents if they
consider the immigration intake to be too high, about right, or too low
(Goot, 1999). The record of polling indicates considerable volatility of
response. In periods of increasing or relatively high unemployment, there

has been majority of support for the view that the intake is too high.
In times of economic growth and low unemployment, there is majority
support for the level of current immigration or its increase. During the
recession of the early 1990s, a large majority (over 70% at its peak) consid-
ered the intake to be ‘too high’ while, since 2000, this has been a minority
viewpoint in most surveys.
Over the years 2001–2009, most surveys found that the proportion
who considered the intake to be ‘about right’ or ‘too low’ was in the
range 54 to 57%. In 2010, in the context of the ‘big Australia’ debates,
the Scanlon Foundation survey found that agreement that the intake was
‘about right’ or ‘too low’ fell to 46%, while the ‘too high’ response
increased by ten percentage points to 47%. This finding was almost
identical to the 46% average result from five polls conducted by survey
agencies in the period March–July 2010 (The Age 2010 as cited in
Markus, 2012; Roy Morgan, 2010). This suggests that public opinion
is at least somewhat sensitive to fluctuations in the public debate.
The increased negativity towards immigration was temporary. Between
2011 and 2013, the proportion in agreement that the intake was too
high was in the range 38–42% and, between 2014 and 2016, a lower 34–
35%. In 2016, a substantial majority (59%) considered that the intake was
‘about right’ or ‘too low’ and, in 2017, a marginally lower 56% (Table 1).
Since 2016, there has been an increase in the proportion who consider
the intake to be ‘too high’, an increase of nine percentage points to 43%
in 2018, although the finding of the Scanlon Foundation surveys is that
Table 1 ‘What do you think of the number of immigrants accepted into

Australia?’ 2012–2018
Too high (%) About right (%) Too low (%) Refused/Don’t know (%)
2012 38 42 14 7
2013 42 38 13 7
2014 35 42 17 8
2015 35 41 19 5
2016 34 40 19 7
2017 37 40 16 7
2018 43 35 17 4
Source Scanlon Foundation (Markus, 2012–2018)

the majority (52%) are of the view that the intake is ‘about right’ or ‘too
low’.
Several surveys conducted in 2016 and 2017 support the pattern indi-
cated by Scanlon Foundation surveys, with those who consider the intake
to be too high being in the range 34–42%. Thus, the 2016 Australian
Election Study found support for a reduction in immigration at 42%,
the 2017 Lowy Institute Poll obtained agreement with the view that
the intake was too high at 40% and the 2017 Life in Australia survey
an identical 40%. In 2018, the October Fairfax-Ipsos poll found 45% in
favour of a reduction in the intake and the Life in Australia survey 44%.
But a number of other polls, using a range of questions and sampling
methodologies, found 54% to 72% in support of a reduction in the
intake, findings that received prominent attention in the Australian media
(Markus, 2017, 2018).
In sum, majority public opinion in Australia, in contrast to a number
of European countries, accepts the reality that Australia is a country
of immigration. Thus, the eleven Scanlon Foundation national surveys
conducted since 2007 have obtained a consistent measure of agreement,
in the range 62–68%, with the proposition that ‘accepting immigrants
from many different countries makes Australia stronger’.
Also, in contrast to Europe, the concept of multiculturalism continues
to obtain a high level of positive support. Since 2013, the Scanlon Foun-
dation surveys asked for response to the proposition that ‘multiculturalism
has been good for Australia’. Agreement has been consistent, in the
range 83–86%. Of those who are favourable towards multiculturalism,
the support of a substantial proportion is conditional on signs indicating
a commitment to integrate, to accept what are seen as Australian values.
For the majority, multiculturalism is understood as a two-way process
of change, requiring adaptation by both Australia-born and immigrant.
The 2016–2018 Scanlon Foundation surveys presented respondents with
two propositions that ‘we should do more to learn about the customs
and heritage of different ethnic and cultural groups in this country’, and
‘people who come to Australia should change their behaviour to be more
like Australians’. Close to two out of three respondents (in the range
60–66%) indicated agreement with both propositions. Immigration is an
issue which can evoke very strong feelings, with entrenched negative
views held by close to 10% of the population, indicated by the 10–15%
who disagree that multiculturalism has been good for Australia. When
those with strongly held negative views and those tending negative are
combined, surveys find that more than one-third of Australians agree that
the immigration intake is too high (43% in 2018) and 26–30% disagree
with the value of a diverse intake.
There are a range of views on immigration and cultural diversity, as on
all issues within the political realm, and relatively high levels of negative
opinion towards Muslims. Strident minority viewpoints are in evidence
in social media, public campaigns and during elections. The populist One
Nation Party, which received 4.3% of the national vote in the 2016 Senate
election, but stronger levels of support on a regional basis, with voter
support in excess of 25% in a number of Queensland state electorates,
channels discontent with a particular focus on immigration. The 2017
Scanlon Foundation survey found that 78% of One Nation supporters
‘strongly agree’ with the proposition that ‘people who come to Australia
should change their behaviour to be more like Australians’ and 82%
disagree with the value of a diverse immigration intake (Markus, 2017).
Australia does as well as any country in its immigration and settlement
policies—but there is no shortage of evidence of the challenges posed by
immigration for host society and immigrant.
7 The Contemporary Situation

In response to the calls for lower migration from their Coalition
colleagues, the two Ministers most involved in setting the level of the
Australian migration programme, the Treasurer and the Minister for
Home Affairs, in rapid-fire, made strong statements in support of current
migration policy and their two departments published a joint report which
supports the continuation of migration at its present level (Common-
wealth of Australia, 2018). On 4 May 2018, a National Compact on
Permanent Migration (Migration Council of Australia, 2018) was issued
with the signatories being the leading business organizations, unions
including the Australian Council of Trade Unions and community orga-
nizations. This Compact is a powerful statement in support of current
migration levels and of migration in general, stating:
Australia is a country based on multicultural values where migrants enjoy

the equality of opportunity to participate and benefit from Australia’s
social, economic and political life. As our economic opportunities in the
Asia Pacific continue to advance and our population ages, Australia will
need migrants to bring skills and youth to complement and develop our
domestic workforce and to help to grow the national income needed to

support our high standard of living. (Migration Council of Australia, 2018)
The strength of this statement and the inclusion of several unions as signa-
tories suggest that it is unlikely that Australia will move very far from its
present migration programme targets in the short term. This conclusion
is reinforced by a recent analysis of future labour demand in Australia that
projects a 16% increase in the number of employed persons in the next
eight years and little capacity to meet that demand from local sources
(McDonald, 2018b; Shah & Dixon, 2018).
In the 2018 election in the State of Victoria, the Labor Party won with
a massive majority while supporting the high immigration levels that have
led to the rapid growth of Melbourne. Of the eight states and territories,
only New South Wales has called for a lower migrant intake and six of the
eight would like to see more immigrants coming to their jurisdictions.
In December 2018, the level of the migration intake was the leading
agenda item on a meeting of the Council of Australian Governments
(COAG) at which the Prime Minister meets with the Premiers and First
Ministers of all the states and territories. At the invitation of the Prime
Minister, an author of this chapter, Peter McDonald, was asked to present
the argument to COAG on why migration should be continued at its
present level. He focussed on two main arguments: (1) that at least for
the next decade, labour demand will outstrip labour supply with migration
as the only option for balance, and (2) that migration (as discussed earlier
in this chapter) has a beneficial effect upon population ageing. At this
meeting, it was agreed that the states and territories will have a greater
role in setting the migration target and that efforts should be made to
spread the immigrants more broadly across Australia.
The forces calling for much reduced levels of international migration
in Australia rallied again with the 2019 federal election in view. Dissident
members on the right wing of the ruling Coalition Government such
as the deposed former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, were among those
calling for a much lower migration level (a reduction from 190,000 to
70,000). The Premier of the largest state New South Wales, Gladys Bere-
jiklian, called for a halving of net migration to that state in order to relieve
pressure upon the city of Sydney. She set up a review panel to advise her
on this strategy (cf. SBS Korean, 2018). The NSW panel’s report was
provided to the Premier but not published. Berejiklian and her party won
the 2019 election in New South Wales despite taking no specific approach
to immigration, and she won the election. A prominent former retailer,

Dick Smith, poured money into advertising to substantially reduce the
migration intake on the grounds of congestion in the two major cities.
He also intended to fund anti-migration candidates in the 2019 federal
election.
Those opposed to present migration levels pointed to the recent
lowering of the migration intake by the new Labor Government of New
Zealand—without pointing out that, before it was reduced, the rate of net
migration to New Zealand was almost twice the Australian rate and that
the new, lower New Zealand target remains above the current Australian
rate.
The new objections to the level of immigration have been based
largely upon congestion and housing prices in the two large cities of
Sydney and Melbourne. In announcing a small cut in the immigration
programme (190,000 to 160,000), the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison,
referred to congestion in Sydney and Melbourne as justification for this
cut (cf. Greene, 2019). The housing price argument, however, fell away
in 2019 with substantial and continuing falls in prices in Sydney and
Melbourne due primarily to more stringent lending restrictions by the
banks. Both major political parties at the 2019 election supported the
growth of the satellite cities surrounding Sydney and Melbourne through
the construction of fast and connecting train services. For example, a new
32-minutes service between the regional city of Geelong and Melbourne
was proposed by the Coalition Party. And both major parties emphasized
infrastructure spending to relieve congestion.
8 Conclusion
Australia has a long history of migration and, since the cessation in the
1970s of discriminatory selection, immigrants have come to Australia
from all of the countries of the world. In particular, there has been
rapid growth in the numbers of people with Asian origins. Opposition
to regular migration on the grounds of race or religion exists in Australia
but it carries very little political weight and has virtually no impact on
election results. The policy of multiculturalism is supported by five out of
six Australians. It could be said that as Australia has taken people from a
vast array of cultures, it has become more and more accepting of multi-
culturalism. Opposition to undocumented migration remains very strong
across the political spectrum in both Australia and New Zealand and, in
this regard, it has been argued that the cessation of irregular arrivals by
boat has enabled successive governments to provide greater legitimacy
to higher levels of regular migration. In the Australian case, very strict
border controls have led to higher rather than lower levels of migration.
A majority of Australians consider that migration provides economic
benefits to Australia and both the major political parties hold this view
as well. There are pockets of opposition to the population growth that
migration brings based on impacts to the environment and crowding in
the major cities, but these objections do not feed through to a major
impact on the ways that people vote. Improved economic well-being is
one of the principal factors that influence the way that Australians vote
and, from this perspective, migration and population growth are seen to
be positives by most voters.
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CHAPTER 12
The Politics of Demography in Unequal

Societies: Argentina and Brazil Compared
Diego Wachs, Vitor Goncalves Cavalcanti, and Clara Galeazzi
1 Introduction
This chapter reviews the most important demographic issues in Latin
America generally, with a focus on Argentina and Brazil, and how these
issues interact with economic, political and social trends. The first section
introduces the reader to major demographic trends of population ageing,
migration and ethnicity, and urbanization. The following sections discuss
each of these trends in greater detail, linking them to the region’s perva-
sive problem of inequality. Last, the chapter discusses how the salient
D. Wachs (B)
Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, London School of Economics and Political
Science, London, UK
e-mail: d.wachs2@lse.ac.uk
V. Goncalves Cavalcanti
World Bank, Washington, DC, USA
C. Galeazzi
Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (CEENRG)
at the Land Economy Department, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_12
304 D. WACHS ET AL.
demographic challenge of population ageing may exacerbate inequality,

populism and macroeconomic crises.
With a current population of 44 million, Argentina is the third most
populous country in South America, surpassed only by Colombia and
Brazil (Fig. 1). It ranks 31st in world population and its population
has been growing at a rate of 1.09% since the 1990s, very close to the
median across countries worldwide (1.32%). Argentina is expected to keep
growing at a declining rate and to reach a population of 52.6 million by
2040. With a population of 210.8 million in 2018, Brazil has the world’s
fifth largest population. The country grew at an annual average of 1.27%
between 1990 and 2016 and is expected to reach a population of 231.6
million by 2040 (UN, 2017). The change in shape of the population
pyramid depicted in Fig. 1 depicts the rapid ageing process both coun-
tries are facing. The median age in Argentina is expected to increase by
nine years between 1990 and 2040. The case is more acute in Brazil,
Fig. 1 Population pyramids in Argentina and Brazil (Note Males are to the left
[black], females to the right [grey], Median age [MA], ageing stage [AS]. Source
12 THE POLITICS OF DEMOGRAPHY IN UNEQUAL SOCIETIES … 305
Table 1 Main demographic indicators for Argentina and Brazil in 2015
Argentina Brazil
Net migrationa (% of population) 0.07% 0.01%

Size of age groups (% of population)
0–17 30.0% 28.4%
18–35 56.1% 56.4%
65+ 10.9% 8.0%
80+ 2.7% 1.6%
65 + (% population 18–64) 18.5% 12.5%
Total population 43,417,765 205,962,108
Population density relative to CROP land area 39.7 30.8
City densityb,c (population per km2 ) 4,650 2,969
a Average 2010–2015
b 2016 in Argentina
c Top 33 urban agglomerates in Argentina based on population size
Source Goerres et al. (2020), Lanfranchi et al. (2018), Embrapa (2017), and World Bank (2018)
where the expected age increase is almost 20 years. This steep increase in
median age is a shared problem across Latin America, which will be the
world region with the fastest increase in the old-age dependency ratio in
the next decades (UN, 2017).
In stark contrast to their histories, neither Argentina nor Brazil have
experienced important international migratory flows in recent decades.
In 2015, net migration was less than 0.1% of the total population in
both countries (Table 1). Moreover, the countries of origin of migrants
have shifted. Whereas they previously migrated from overseas, they now
migrate from neighbouring countries. The following section will delve
deeper into the important connection between migration and ethnic
composition of the two countries.
South America is the world’s most urbanized region (when including
Central America, Latin America is second only to North America).
Argentina and Brazil surpass regional averages, with over 90 and 85%
of their population residing in towns and cities, respectively. This high
level of urbanization occurred in the twentieth century, within the span
of two generations. Influencing factors included a push away from rural
areas due to the introduction of capitalist modes of production, and a
pulling towards industrial clustering in cities, which offered significant
labour opportunities.
306 D. WACHS ET AL.
2 Migration and Ethnicity

2.1 Migration
Migration has shaped the history of Argentina. First inhabited by indige-
nous populations, the area now known as the Argentine Republic was
a Spanish colony between 1580 and 1810. Great waves of immigrants,
mainly European males from Italy and Spain (but also other Euro-
pean, Asian and Jewish minorities), arrived between the mid-nineteenth
century and the mid-twentieth century. In the first decade of the twen-
tieth century, Argentina had the highest immigration to population ratio
in the world (Glaeser et al., 2018). Immigrants mixed with the rela-
tively smaller local indigenous population, an African base that had been
brought during the Spanish conquest and the Spanish colonists. Brazil has
had similar migration flows. Before the sixteenth century, it was home to
native tribal societies. As a Portuguese colony between 1500 and 1815,
the country experienced mainly Portuguese immigration, followed by an
influx of Africans brought as slaves primordially from the African west
coast. From 1884 until the decade preceding the Second World War, 4.2
million people migrated to Brazil from Western and Southern Europe,
Japan, Syria and Turkey (IBGE, 2000).
Despite their history of immigration, Argentina and Brazil have not
experienced substantial migratory flows in recent decades. In 2015, net
migration was less than 0.1% of the total population in both countries,
and their stock of migrants (those already in the countries) was very close
to the world average (UN, 2017). Additionally, as shown in Fig. 2, the
immigratory flow today comes mostly from other Latin American coun-
tries. Immigrants from Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia made up
about 75% of the migratory flow to Argentina in 2015. Brazil shows a
very similar composition, except that it also received a high number of
immigrants from Haiti.1 Notably, there is discrimination against immi-
grants from some of Argentina’s neighbouring countries, likely because
they are often associated with specific social classes.2 Hence, migration
1 This may be due a willingness by Brazilians to receive Haitians and because Brazil led
the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti between 2004 and 2017. The mission
arguably led to a greater reciprocal awareness by officials in both countries.
2 A paper by Meseguer and Kemmerling (2018) found that fears of greater tax burdens
due to increasing social expenditure are strong and robust predictors of anti-immigrant
sentiments in Argentina. The authors attribute these findings to a differential in skills
Fig. 2 Immigration to Argentina and Brazil in 2015, top origin countries. In

thousands (Note South American countries in Blue. Please note the different
scales of the Y axis. Source Direccion Nacional de Migraciones [2018] and Policia
Federal do Brasil [2017])
might already be indirectly addressed in the political agenda through the

lens of social class and inequality, an important topic which we will expand
on in the following section (Grimson, 2006; Pascucci, 2010).
Perhaps due to the relatively small number of immigrants in the last
decades, immigration is neither an important issue of political debate
nor an established topic in the agenda of major political parties in either
country. One contemporary exception is the recent increase in Venezuelan
migrants fleeing the political and economic crisis in their country. The
United Nations Human Rights Council estimates that more than 4
million Venezuelans left their country between 2015 and 2019, with
almost 208,000 and 150,000 migrating to Argentina and Brazil, respec-
tively (UNHRC, 2020).3 Given its size and speed, it is one of the largest
migratory events of recent decades in the region. The influx to Brazil and
Argentina has increased more than 10-fold and almost 4.5 times between
2015 and 2017, respectively (Mely Reyes, 2018). Up to the time of this
between immigrants and the local population, high inequality, informality and a generous
welfare state.
3 The figure includes only those that obtained a residence permit. The total number of
migrants is higher.
308 D. WACHS ET AL.
manuscript (August 2020), most countries in the region, including Brazil

and Argentina, have welcomed Venezuelan migrants. However, as the
exodus accelerates, many question whether or not the region will main-
tain its open-door policy. For example, Chile and Colombia have already
tightened their documentation requirements for Venezuelan immigrants
(Charles & Wyss, 2018).
Argentina’s two largest political parties, Frente de Todos and Juntos
por el Cambio, have expressed an open arms attitude towards Venezuelan
migrants, and even though the above paragraphs highlight discrimina-
tion against migrants in Argentina, there are two reasons that explain
this apparent contradiction. First, Venezuelan migrants in Argentina are
younger and better educated than their counterparts from other coun-
tries in the region (Himitan, 2017). This is particularly important in the
context of population ageing that we address in the next sections. Second,
although Juntos por el Cambio is usually associated with the right side of
the political spectrum (possibly due to a cohort effect, see Goerres, 2008),
the party has been an outspoken critic of the Venezuelan regime. This has
been partly in an effort to differentiate itself from its predecessor, main
political adversary and long-time supporter of the late Hugo Chávez of
Venezuela, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Even though Argentina has approved more residence requests, the
conditions have generated more friction in Brazil. Roraima, which borders
Venezuela and is one of Brazil’s poorest states, has received the highest
concentration of migrants. In 2018, local populations in Roraima claimed
an increase in crime rate linked to the arrival of Venezuelan migrants and
their grievances escalated into violent demonstrations. The government
declared a state of emergency and mobilized military troops with the
aim of assuring the safety of both Brazilians and Venezuelans. However,
according to the President, “the problem of Venezuela is no longer one
of internal politics. It is a threat to the harmony of the whole continent”
(BBC, 2018). Moreover, Brazil’s economy has been unable to accommo-
date the number of Venezuelans that arrive. The government has been
unable to provide the basic services of health, security and housing, or
even to coordinate the distribution of Venezuelan migrants across Brazil.
Hence, half of the Venezuelan migrants that came to Brazil between 2017
and 2018 returned to Venezuela (Polícia Federal do Brasil, 2018).
2.2 Ethnicity
The large flows of migrants who have arrived in Argentina and Brazil
played an important role in shaping the ethnic and religious composition
of both countries.4 In Argentina, the mixture of indigenous populations,
European immigrants, African slaves and other minorities created a blend
denominated crisol de razas (equivalent to the term “melting pot” used in
the United States) in the national culture. European immigration greatly
surpassed other flows, thus Argentina has been labelled a “transplanted
population”, a term used to describe countries where “transplanted”
migrant vastly displaced the indigenous inhabitants (Ribeiro, 1985).
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many countries
in Latin America wrote immigration and citizenship laws that reflected
European preference. At the same time, Argentina was one of the most
attractive destinations for European immigrants due to a confluence of
political and economic factors that include the conquest of new terri-
tories, rapid economic growth and improved trade and transportation
technologies (e.g. port infrastructure) (Cook-Martín et al., 2015).
As a result, the prevalent discourse usually favours the country’s Euro-
pean heritage, overlooking the importance of other ethnic influences in
the Argentine crisol de razas (Hopenhayn, 2001; Izquierdo Iranzo et al.,
2016). This helps explain the primordial dilemma related to ethnicity
in Argentina: a denial of diversity. Immigrants from adjacent countries
and working populations with indigenous ancestry are stigmatized and
merged into one perceived social class that is minimized in the main-
stream national identity and Argentina’s popular discourse (Grimson,
2006; INADI, 2005).
Like Argentina, Brazil’s population is the result of a mixture between
indigenous populations and descendants from Europe, Africa, Asia and
the Middle East. However, its population is comparatively more inter-
mixed and the national discourse is relatively more balanced (Dos Santos
4 Migration has also influenced the religious composition of Argentina and Brazil. Euro-
pean influence generated a Catholic majority in both countries. Nevertheless, the political
influence of Catholicism and religion differs in both countries. Despite recent controversy
over a vote by the Argentine Senate in 2018 to continue to penalize abortion, in general,
Argentina shows less influence of religion in the political agenda in comparison with
Brazil, where the influence of Protestant political groups has been growing at national
and local levels (Esquivel & Mallimaci, 2016; Teixeira da Silva, 2017). This topic requires
an extensive discussion, and unfortunately, we will not be able to tackle it due to length
constraints.
310 D. WACHS ET AL.
& Anya, 2006). Still, non-Europeans are underrepresented in positions

of power. For instance, although 44.2% of the population was European-
descendent as of 2016, they made up 75% of the congress in 2018
(Câmara dos Deputados do Brasil, 2018; PNUD, 2018).
3 Urbanization and Class Division

3.1 Urbanization
With about 80% of its population residing in towns and cities, Latin
America is the developing world’s most urbanized region. Furthermore,
urbanization is expected to rise to almost 85% by 2030 (UN-Habitat,
2018). Argentina and Brazil exemplify the regional trend. As shown in
Fig. 3, 92% and 86% of their populations reside in urban areas, respectively
(UN-Habitat, 2018).
The current rural-urban distribution is a consequence of economic
developments of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, a significant increase
Fig. 3 Share of total population residing in urban areas (Note High Income
Countries [HIC], Medium Income Countries [MIC], Low Income Countries
[LIC], Latin America and the Caribbean [LAC]. Source UN [2017])
in labour opportunities in cities generated by industrial clustering, and

the introduction of capitalist modes of production in rural areas, fuelled
massive rural-urban migration. Both “pull” factors spurred the transition
from a rural to a highly urban society within only two generations.5,6
Despite being usually associated with rural areas, the region’s indige-
nous population has also been affected by “pull” factors towards towns
and cities, and experiences additional “push” factors. For example, while
indigenous populations tend to be disproportionately excluded from basic
services like electricity, sewage and piped water in both settings, the gap is
higher in rural areas (World Bank, 2015). As a result, in Latin America as
a whole, indigenous populations are almost equally likely to live in rural
as in urban areas.
On the high end of the spectrum, 82% of Argentina’s indigenous popu-
lation reside in urban areas, the highest in the region (World Bank, 2017).
And, while indigenous urbanization tends to correlate with overall urban-
ization in the region, only 39% of indigenous populations reside in cities
in Brazil. For comparison, Chile and Venezuela have similar levels of
general urbanization to Brazil (about 85%) but have a higher level of
indigenous urbanization (about 65%) (World Bank, 2015).
3.2 Socially Fractured Cities

A look at the history of urbanization in Latin America reveals a fractured
society. The massive and rapid migration to urban centres created periph-
eral settlements rife with unemployment, poverty, inadequate infrastruc-
ture and crime. This affected the structural development of the city that
further entrenched urban segregation. On the one side, there were devel-
oped neighbourhoods with densely-packed houses in precarious condition
5 Even though, as explained in the next section, external migration was an important
source of population growth in cities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
internal (rural-urban and inter-urban) migration surpassed it as a source of population
growth in the cities in the twentieth century.
6 As a consequence of massive urban growth, Latin America has a primacy index (the
ratio of the primate city to the second largest in a country or region) that stands out when
compared to other regions in the world. Nevertheless, since the 1970s, the region has
seen a relative decline of traditional primate cities. This is due to, among other factors, a
decrease of internal and international migration, lower levels of fertility and the economic
attraction of new hubs created by local and regional export booms (Rodgers & Beall,
2011).
312 D. WACHS ET AL.
(so-called slums, shantytowns and squatter settlements).7 On the other

side, there was a proliferation of “fortified enclaves”, privatized, enclosed
and monitored spaces of residence, consumption, leisure and work, aimed
at keeping its residents and their property safe from the outside world.
This set-up affected not only the spatial distribution of cities, but also
the dynamics between social groups. The physical division of inhabitants
disrupted community cohesion, and slums were increasingly regarded as
formations apart from cities itself. Urban development initiatives often
failed to consider marginalized areas and peoples, furthering segregation
and amplifying class conflict (Hernández et al., 2010; Rodgers & Beall,
2011). Indigenous populations suffered disproportionately from these
disadvantages because they were overrepresented in slums (World Bank,
2015).
Post military regimes of the 1950s–1980s, a wave of democratization
transformed the status quo in Latin America (Hagopian & Mainwaring,
2005). During this period of increased affirmation of political rights, the
perception of slums mutated from unintended and politically irrelevant
consequences of development to untapped sources of political activity.
Together with the flourishing of social movements of the time, this trans-
formation was crucial for the advancement of otherwise marginalized
groups, allowing them to gain the necessary clout to push their inter-
ests into the political decision-making process (Rodgers & Beall, 2011).8
While it undisputedly improved the political participation of marginalized
groups, the new reality did not solve segregation in cities or the related
problem of inequality.
3.3 Inequality
Fractured cities exemplify a pervasive problem of inequality. Research
over the past decades has shown that inequality should be a matter
of concern for political and economic reasons. It can decrease social
7 In the Latin American vernacular: asentamientos, favelas, barriadas, poblaciones, and

villas miserias.
8 Social movements are forms of collective action. In Argentina, Brazil and the region,
these have been so diverse that a single label cannot encompass their motivations and
ambitions. From squatters to ecologists, to food kitchens in poor urban neighbourhoods,
socialist feminist groups, human rights and gay and lesbian coalitions, the spectrum of
Latin American collective action covers a broad range of issues (Escobar & Alvarez, 1992).
cohesion and generate mistrust in the government, decimating public

institutions. It can also weaken the pace of the accumulation of phys-
ical and human capital and affect productivity growth, which are sources
of economic growth (IADB, 1999; Peterson, 2017). Sadly, Argentina
and Brazil, as many other countries in Latin America, are quintessen-
tial case studies of these relationships. Despite recent improvements over
the past 15 years, Latin America is arguably the most unequal region in
the world (Lustig, 2015; Robinson, 2010). While the world average Gini
Index between 2000 and 2016 was 38.9, the indicator was 46.1 and 54.7
in Argentina and Brazil, respectively. Following world trends, inequality
measured by the Gini coefficient is even higher when measured through
land ownership (Fig. 4).
In the region, the largest one percent of farms concentrate more than
half of agricultural land. In other words, that one percent holds more land
than the remaining 99%. In South America, the Gini coefficient of land
ownership is even higher than in Latin American as a whole, reaching
0.85 (FAO, 2017). Argentina and Brazil are no exceptions to regional
Fig. 4 Wealth and land distribution in Latin America (Source OXFAM [2016],
World Bank [2018], and GRAIN [2014])
314 D. WACHS ET AL.
trends; their land Gini coefficients are 0.83 and 0.87, respectively (FAO,
2017).9 If, on top of quantity, the distribution could somehow measure
quality (e.g. incorporating measures of soil quality, proximity to markets,
availability of water, etc.), inequality would be even higher (OXFAM,
2016). In the next sections, we shall see how high inequality in Argentina
and Brazil feeds class conflict, affects the political rhetoric and influences
economic policy in political cycles originally described by Sachs (1989).
4 Population Ageing
Pension systems and conditional (non-contributory) cash transfer schemes
are responsible for a great share of Latin America’s reduction in inequality
over the last two decades (Lustig, 2015; Rossignolo, 2016; Veras Soares
et al., 2010). However, population ageing may jeopardize the sustain-
ability of these programmes. Due in large extent to a high level of
spending in Brazil’s pension scheme, as well as a high coverage of formal
sector workers by contributory pensions, public spending by age group
shows a clear bias towards the elderly. A representative measure is the
ratio of elderly poverty to overall poverty in Brazil, which is the lowest
in Latin America (OECD/IDB/The World Bank, 2014).10 In Argentina,
the results are not as extreme, but social transfers are also biased towards
the elderly (Gragnolati et al., 2015).
In addition to their substantial retirement schemes, both countries
have sizable non-contributory conditional cash transfer programmes that
target poor families with children. The programmes are aimed at reducing
poverty and are contingent on the provision of education and on the
health of children. In Argentina, the Asignación Universal por Hijo
(Universal Child Allocation) was created in 2009. By January 2018,
the programme had 3.9 million beneficiaries and accounted for 1.3% of
government spending. In Brazil, similar initiatives started in 2001 and
were expanded and centralized in 2003 under the name of Bolsa Família
9 The Land Gini coefficients belong to studies in 1998 and 2004 in Argentina and
Brazil, respectively. These are the most recent estimates according to the source (OXFAM,
2016).
10 Another representative measure is the share of children in poor families, which is five
times higher than that of elderly citizens (Pérez et al., 2006).
Fig. 5 Old-age dependency ratio (Source UN [2017])
(Family Grant). Today, it benefits 14 million households.11 In 2018, the

programme remains active and was described by Veras Soares et al. (2010)
as the largest conditional cash transfer programme in the world.
As previously discussed, Argentina and Brazil’s demographic transition
is underway and will accelerate in the next decades. Specifically, between
1950 and 2015, life expectancy increased from 63 to 76 in Argentina, and
from 51 to 75 in Brazil. During the same period, fertility decreased from
3 to 2 children per woman in Argentina and from 6 to 2 in Brazil (UN,
2017). Consequently, there has been an increase in the ratio of those in
retirement age to those in working age, or the old-age dependency ratio
(Fig. 5). However, between 2015 and 2050, the indicator is expected to
11 These programmes are highly controversial, especially in Argentina where the Asig-
nación Universal por Hijo captures an important share of the political discussion, probably
due to its non-contributory nature. Opponents have argued that the programme reduces
labour force participation, increases fertility in an irresponsible manner and even raises
poverty. Nevertheless, the existing research found no, or marginal, undesirable effects
(Garganta et al., 2017; Veras Soares et al., 2010). The amount of attention devoted to
these programmes is evidence of the polarizing effects that high levels of inequality have
in Argentina and Brazil. Contributory programmes, like old-age pensions, comprise a
much larger portion of the national budget and will be severely impacted by demographic
dynamics.
316 D. WACHS ET AL.
increase at a faster pace—from 19.5–30 in Argentina, and 13–40 in Brazil

(UN, 2017).
Based on the population dynamics described above, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates an increase in social spending of 140%
in Argentina and of 190% in Brazil (IMF, 2017, 2018a, b; Wachs
et al., 2017). The IMF projections depict unsustainable scenarios, and
the system would implode before reaching such levels. The correlation
between dependency and social spending has been debated in many
studies. For example, Sanderson and Scherbov (2015) argue that the indi-
cator omits the effects of changes in labour force participation, which may
offset the impact of population ageing. Nevertheless, there is no reason to
believe that labour force participation rates will increase significantly soon.
It has been decreasing in both Argentina and Brazil since the mid-2000s,
and the levels are close to, or higher, than those of comparable countries
(World Bank, 2017). Some studies have suggested that closing the gap
between male and female labour force participation could help offset the
impact of decreasing population growth rates (Adamchak & Friedman,
1983; Bloom et al., 2011). Female participation in the labour force in
Argentina and Brazil increased significantly in the 1990s and today is
around two-thirds of male participation. However, the increases of the
past decades have not continued since the turn of the century (World
Bank, 2017). Moreover, population ageing does not only decrease the
share of the population in the working age. In fact, it may also discourage
labour participation of individuals of working age through an increase
in inter-generational dependency in the household, where unpaid labour
tends to fall disproportionately on women (Bussolo et al., 2015; Gál et al.,
2018). Additional work is needed to understand how the interactions of
female workforce participation, population ageing and long-term care will
play out in Latin America.
As shown in Fig. 5, there is a window of opportunity before the
demographic transition accelerates. However, addressing social spending
in Latin America is complex. Due to the high inequality in the region,
social spending is the main cause of recurrent social conflict, ahead of
issues like ethnicity, religion and immigration. This societal backdrop also
helps explain the populist rhetoric that makes part of pervasive political
and macroeconomic cycles. The connection between inequality, populism
and macroeconomic crises has been well documented, starting with Sachs
(1989) and Dornbusch and Edwards (1991). These studies argue that
persistent poverty and inequality in Latin America influences the political
agenda by creating intense political pressure on macroeconomic poli-

cies, often tasked to raise the income of lower income groups. In many
cases, this pressure contributes to poor policy choices and consequently,
weak economic performance (Birdsall et al., 2011; Dornbusch & Edwards
1991; Glaeser et al., 2018; IADB 1999; OXFAM, 2016; Sachs 1989).12
Governments that are, genuinely or otherwise, concerned about
inequality have tended to initiate myopic and overly expansionary macroe-
conomic policies. While these policies may increase wages and boost the
economy in the short run, they eventually lead to high inflation and severe
balance of payments crises that culminate in economic crises. Ultimately,
the cycle exacerbates poverty and sluggish development (Dornbusch &
Edwards, 1991; Sachs, 1989). The same dynamics were present in the
recent economic and political cycles of Argentina and Brazil. In fact,
recent protests against social spending reforms in both countries limited
the capacity of the government to legislate (Cohen & Misculin, 2017;
Marcello & Marcelino, 2017). Even though the protests were grounded
in real necessities of poverty alleviation, the current welfare systems of
both countries are unsustainable under the expected demographic trends
(IMF, 2017, 2018; Wachs et al., 2017).
The context of population ageing, unsustainable welfare and social
unrest depicts the two sides of social conflict (for a broader discussion
see Goerres & Vanhuysse, 2012). On the one hand, it is an expression
of needs for tangible improvements in life quality, issues that must be
addressed (UNDP, 2013). On the other hand, under certain conditions,
social conflict can polarize the political debate and obstruct policy devel-
opment, as has been the case with social spending. If political parties and
the population in Argentina and Brazil are unable to reach an agreement
that puts social spending in a sustainable path, demographic change will
likely intensify the conflict over resources.
12 Already in 1975, Mallon and Sourrouille highlighted the complications associated

with the myopic economic policy carried out by each successive minister of economy in
these countries, which produced massive short-run fluctuations in the economy. Today
Argentina and Brazil rank 11th and 7th internationally when ranked according to the
volatility of their nominal gross domestic product. These numbers are calculated using
Gross Domestic Product growth rates between 1990 and 2016 from the IMF’s World
Economic Outlook database. Rodrik (1999) made the same argument using gross national
product growth rates between the 1990s and the 1980s, finding that, in these periods,
Latin American economies experienced twice as much volatility as industrial economies.
318 D. WACHS ET AL.
5 Conclusion
Argentina and Brazil have transitioned in the last century from rapidly
growing centres of international immigration to having relatively stable
populations. Perhaps due to the small number of immigrants in the last
decades, migration is neither an important issue of political debate nor an
established topic in the political agenda of both countries. Nevertheless,
this has been recently interrupted by the current Venezuelan political and
economic crisis, which triggered the most important surge of migration
in the region of the last decades. The structural development of cities
and the distribution of land ownership in Argentina and Brazil attest
to the region’s inequality, a topic that permeates most economic and
political disputes. While the democratization of the 1980s increased polit-
ical representation of marginalized groups, Latin American cities are still
socially and structurally fractured and inequality in the region also remains
high. Social spending has been a major contributor against poverty and
inequality in the last decades. However, like most countries in Latin
America, Argentina and Brazil are transitioning into having older popu-
lations, a demographic process that tends to increase the share of the
population entitled to pension and healthcare benefits, while reducing the
share of contributors (Tepe & Vanhuysse, 2009; Vanhuysse & Goerres,
2012; this volume). Without reforms, the situation will make health-
care, pension and other social benefits financially unsustainable. Yet, due
in part to inequality, Argentina and Brazil have repeatedly shown an
inability to successfully reform their welfare system. Without the social
cohesion necessary to generate the appropriate policies addressing this
issue, the countries will face new crises, undermining gains in poverty and
inequality over the last decades. Argentina and Brazil, like other countries
in the region, are quintessential case studies of the relationship between
inequality and social conflict. Incorporating this dynamic is fundamental
to understanding the political, economic and societal implications of the
region’s most pressing demographic issues.
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holder.
CHAPTER 13
Intergenerational Controversy and Cultural

Clashes: Political Consequences
of Demographic Change in the US
and Canada Since 1990
Jennifer D. Sciubba
1 Introduction
In the wake of the violent White Supremacist rally in Charlottesville,
Virginia, in August 2017, Mayor Catherine Pugh decided that Balti-
more’s 1887 statue of Roger B. Taney, a Supreme Court Justice who
argued that free Blacks had no claim to citizenship, was out of sync with
contemporary American attitudes. Against intense backlash from activist
groups across the US, Pugh skirted the bureaucracy needed for consensus
on removing the Taney statue and unilaterally ordered the city’s four
monuments commemorating the Confederate cause in the US Civil War
removed in the middle of the night on August 15 (Associated Press,
2018).
J. D. Sciubba (B)
Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, USA
e-mail: sciubbaj@rhodes.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_13
326 J. D. SCIUBBA
Two years later and three-thousand miles away, outside the New
Westminster courthouse in Canada’s westernmost province of British
Columbia, the statue of a bearded and simply dressed man named
Matthew Begbie, celebrated as British Columbia’s first chief justice, faced
a similar fate. Begbie is also known for overseeing a trial in the 1860s
that led to the hanging of six Tsilhqot’in chiefs, heads of one of Canada’s
indigenous groups, or “First Nations” (Lirette, 2019). In May 2019, the
New Westminster council voted to remove that statue from New West-
minster and thus rewrite history, a history that commemorates White
settlers and overlooks their atrocities.
The controversies and cultural clashes in both Baltimore and New
Westminster reflect larger debates over population change in the US and
Canada. As this chapter shows, the demographics of both have changed
along multiple dimensions, including age and generation, national origin
and race, and even ideology and linguistic heritage. Along with those
population changes, the economic power and political voices of various
demographic groups have changed as well. If politics is about who gets
what, then the distribution of economic resources, political power and
even social or cultural capital are relevant to understanding the polit-
ical consequences of demographic change. In line with the other chapters
in this volume, this chapter explores what the political consequences of
demographic change in the US and Canada have been since 1990, and
what trends today portend for future political developments to 2040.
Over the last 40 years, the populations of both the US and Canada
have grown larger and more diverse. Along with the inevitable gener-
ational shifts, the passage of time has brought a shift in proportions
of young and old. Fertility rates have declined, while immigration has
been robust. Sources and proportions of immigrants have been changing
dramatically and, along with natural changes in fertility and mortality, are
shifting the composition of various ethnic and racial groups. The politics
of population change in both the US and Canada have been prominent,
but dissimilar. For example, the decision in New Westminster, British
Columbia, came just a few months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau formally apologized to the Tsilhqot’in community for the hang-
ings (Lirette, 2019). No such apologies have issued from a US head of
state, although local leaders across the US have made decisions similar to
Mayor Pugh’s and Confederate monuments have toppled like dominos.
In the US, given projected fertility, mortality, and migration trends, the
ageing of the US population will be one of the top two population-related
issues there over the next 30 years, primarily because of the insolvency
13 INTERGENERATIONAL CONTROVERSY AND CULTURAL CLASHES … 327
of America’s pay-as-you-go social security system. The other will be the

shrinking White population and increasing proportions of Hispanics and
Asians, which, if past is precedent, will elevate racial issues within political
debates (see Hudson [2012] for an US-centred discussion of ageing).
Canadian society will continue to have difficult debates over the
meaning of multiculturalism as the population grows less White, although
multiculturalism has general support in most of the country. Similar to
the US, population ageing is likely to take centre stage as low fertility
continues and policies to address support for those at different ages and
stages of life are politicized.
The following sections of this chapter progress from a general intro-
duction to demographic trends and projections in the US and Canada
between 1990 and 2040, to sections on the economic fortunes of various
groups, their mobilization capacity, influence of institutions and a discus-
sion of the rhetoric of population change. Despite similar demographics,
the political outcomes are different. In particular, this chapter shows
that the mobilization capacity of US minorities is hampered by voter
eligibility rules, an issue less relevant in Canada. In both, federalist insti-
tutions devolve power to state or provincial levels, but when combined
with demographics yield different political impacts in the two countries.
The tenor of rhetoric surrounding demographics has been nearly oppo-
site in the two countries, although demographics are important in both.
The chapter concludes with a reflection on the continued salience of
population issues in the political arena in the coming decades.
2 Demographic Context
The demographics of the US and Canada mimic those of other developed
countries in terms of declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancy
over time, but the two countries stand out for higher population growth
than most of their peers. The US and Canada have grown at a hearty clip
over the last three decades: the US population has increased by 27% and
Canada’s by 30%. In terms of median age, the US and Canada are the
youngest G-7 countries1 —in part due to near-replacement fertility in the
US case, and robust immigration in both cases.
Understanding why US fertility stayed higher than its peers’ is compli-
cated, as is understanding why it may be starting to fall. However, some
1 The G-7 is comprised of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.
328 J. D. SCIUBBA
Fig. 1 Population pyramids for US and Canada (Note Males are to the left
have argued that Black2 and Hispanic fertility was just high enough, and
White fertility at around 1.8 children per woman on average—not too
low—to keep the country’s total fertility rate around replacement level
of 2.0 for the last several decades (Lesthaeghe & Neidert, 2006: 693).
This exceptionality seems to be fading. Births in the US are now at a
30-year low and its total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.76 is the lowest in
40 years (Hamilton et al., 2021). Births are even rarer in Canada. The
last time Canadian fertility was at replacement level was in 1971 and since
1999 immigration has been the primary driver of population growth. In
fact, natural increase (births over deaths) only accounted for one-third
of population growth in Canada in 2018 (Statistics Canada, 2018b). As
Fig. 1 shows, the population is concentrated in prime working ages, but
2 In line with US Census categories, this chapter uses the term Black instead of African-
American. The latter term can be inaccurate, as not all Blacks in the US are African-
American.
the narrowing base of the pyramid indicates low fertility and a future of
population ageing.
What has changed? As is the case across most developed countries,
women in the US and Canada seem to be postponing childbearing in
order to complete their education and begin a career, as we know from
rising ages at first marriage and first birth (Lesthaeghe & Neidert, 2006:
669). In Canada, data clearly show that actual age-specific fertility rates
peak from 30–35 years, which is relatively “old” for childbearing, demo-
graphically speaking (Statistics Canada, 2018a). US fertility has trended
downward, in part because births among adolescents and teenagers have
fallen over the past several years—the birth rate among those aged 15 to
19 was down 8 percent in 2020 alone (Hamilton et al., 2021).
Populations in the US and Canada have also grown because of immi-
gration. As Table 1 shows, both the US and Canada are net recipients
of migrants. Compared to the US, the annual influx of migrants as a
proportion of population in Canada is over twice as high as in the US.
By the mid-1990s, immigration, not natural increase, was the key driver
of growth in America’s potential workforce, even with near-replacement
fertility (Passel & Cohn, 2017). This trend is not new—historically, the
US and Canada are countries of immigration. European settlers displaced
native people centuries ago and high numbers of immigrants from diverse
Table 1 Key demographic statistics, US and Canada, 1990–2040
1990 2015 2040
Net migration as percentage of population

US +1.36% +1.40% +1.34%
Canada +3.16% +3.19% +2.59%
Population ages 0–17 years
US 26% 22.7% 21.4%
Canada 25% 19.4% 18.1%
Population 65+
US 12.5% 14.8% 21.9%
Canada 11.2% 16.1% 25.3%
Population 80+
US 2.8% 3.8% 7.5%
Canada 2.3% 4.2% 9.2%
Total population
US 252,847,800 321,773,600 373,766,700
Canada 27,662,440 35,939,930 42,478,670

330 J. D. SCIUBBA
continents have since sought both North American countries out as lands
of promise. The US and Canada remain top destinations for migrants
worldwide and today 13.5% of the US population (Zong et al., 2018) and
more than one in five Canadians are first-generation immigrants (Statistics
Canada, 2017). Immigration is relevant to fertility as well; in Canada’s
case, immigrant fertility has been about 20% higher than native-born
(Adserà & Ferrer, 2013: 18), helping drive Canada’s population growth.
While younger than their peers, Canada’s and America’s populations
are still ageing. As Table 1 shows, the proportion of Canadians ages 0–17
will have decreased by 7% between 1990 and 2040; Americans of that
same age group will have decreased by 4.5%. In contrast, the proportion
of those at the opposite end of the age spectrum have ballooned, and at
an increasing rate. The proportion of the US population over 65 years
of age will be 9% higher in 2040 than in 1990, but most of that growth
will take place between 2015 and 2040. Canada’s population aged 65+ is
growing even more rapidly, from 11.2% of the total population in 1990
to 25.3% by 2040. Proportions of the “oldest-old”, those aged 80+, will
reach 7.2% and 9.2% in the US and Canada, respectively. In 2017, for
the first time, there were more seniors aged 65 and over in Canada than
children aged 0–14 (Ciolfe, 2017).
In the US, non-White groups have lower median ages than Whites, but
all racial groups in the US are ageing. In 2015, the median age for Asians
was 36 years, for Blacks was 34 years and for Hispanics was 28 years,
although the lowest median age, still up from 25 in 2000. For Whites,
it was significantly older: 43 years (Flores, 2017). In Canada, 2011 data
showed that non-White groups—what Canada terms ‘visible minorities’—
followed a similar pattern to the US. While the population as a whole had
a median age of 40.1, Blacks had the youngest median age, at 29.5 years,
Arabs second youngest at 30.2, South Asians at 32.8 and Chinese at 38.6
(Ministry of Finance, 2016).3
Together, these trends in fertility, mortality and migration are leading
to a shift towards mixed-race, non-White populations in both the US and
Canada. Although Hispanics were still the fastest growing ethnic group
in the US as of 2015, growth has slowed because of both reduced immi-
gration and falling Hispanic fertility rates. The proportion of Hispanics of
Mexican origin peaked in 2008 and other Latin American countries, such
3 The Canadian statistics bureau did not report the median age of the non-visible
minority population, only the population total.
as El Salvador and Honduras, are increasingly important in shaping the

makeup of US Hispanics. The share of US-born as opposed to foreign-
born Hispanics is increasing as well, from 59.9% in 2000 to 65.6% in 2015
(Flores, 2017). Over the next decades, those of Asian descent will see
some of the most remarkable growth—since 1990, Asians have increas-
ingly comprised a greater proportion of new US immigrants. India was
the top country of origin for new US immigrants in 2015 with 110,000
immigrants, followed by Mexico with 109,000, China with 90,000 and
Canada with 35,000 (Lopez & Bialik, 2017). Taken together, these
trends mean that non-Hispanic Whites will lose their majority status in
the US by 2055 (Pew Research Center, 2015); that shift will happen
sooner in certain US states. By 2010, 22 of the biggest 100 metropolitan
areas in the US were majority non-White. Racially, Canada is relatively
White, but like the US, by 2050, will be majority-minority. That shift has
already happened in the greater Toronto area and Vancouver is on the
cusp (Kaufmann, 2018).
As the following sections will show, the ageing populations and
increasing minority populations of the US and Canada are important
drivers of political rhetoric and policy change. Age and race also correlate
with economic power.
3 Economic Clout
The economic fortunes of those in Canada and the US are intimately
tied to broader demographic trends. There are vast differences between
the socioeconomic attainments of subgroups in the US and in Canada.
In the US, especially, non-White populations have less wealth than the
White population; younger generations have been slower to accumulate
wealth than preceding generations were. These trends are intertwined,
as younger generations are more diverse than older ones. While such
differences by race or generation are less pronounced in Canada, in both
countries generational issues are exacerbated by ageing populations. Over
time, greater proportions of older people and fewer workers magnify the
impact of socioeconomic differences among generations.
Increasing wealth disparities track age and racial lines in the US.
Fortunes for minorities have trended downward over the last few
decades—the wealth of Black and Latino families decreased by 75% and
50%, respectively, between 1983 and 2013. During that same time period,
White families saw a 14% increase in their median wealth from $102,200
332 J. D. SCIUBBA
to $116,800 (Collins et al., 2017: 5). The Institute for Policy Studies
calculated that other than the value of their durable goods like furniture
and cars, in 2013 the median US Black family had net wealth of $1,700,
the median Latino family $2,000 and the median White family $116,800
(Collins et al., 2017). A 2015 study in Boston, one of America’s major
cities, found that the wealth of the median White family was $247,500,
while the wealth of the median Black family was a mere $8 (2018). In
a country where wealth yields political influence, as in the US, these
disparities have meant that political power continues to be concentrated
in the hands of a shrinking White population, even as the proportion of
non-Whites increases.
If we look just along age lines, not, we see major differences in
economic clout among various generations in the US as well. In general,
US Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, are hitting the mile-
stones of adulthood—like moving out of their parents’ homes, starting
a career, getting married and having kids—about five to seven years
later than did their Baby Boomer parents (Benedict-Nelson & Taylor
2012). This “failure to launch” is especially pronounced among Blacks
and Hispanics. Fortunes for younger generations have gotten worse in
the last few decades, in part because of macroeconomic changes, such as
the 2008 financial crisis. While 55% of those aged 25–34 years owned
homes in 1980, only 39% did by 2015 (Frey, 2018: 9). Millennials are
poorer, too (Frey, 2018: 14). Among those aged 18–24, poverty rates
have increased from 12% in 1980 to 20% in 2015, and for those aged
25–34 from 8% to 15% over the same time period.
The relatively low levels of wealth younger generations are accumu-
lating are likely to affect their old-age income security, meaning that
today’s economic problems will reverberate for decades to come. For
example, Black and Hispanic US Millennials, aged between 18 and 34 in
2015, have low savings rates and low credit so their purchasing power is
stunted. The 2008 housing crash and economic recession affected Millen-
nials of all races and their parents. Financial losses of the latter affect the
ability to pass on wealth to younger generations (Frey, 2018: 40). It is
too early to tell whether Millennials’ slow start in asset accumulation will
hinder the wealth positions of their own children. In their favour is the
higher education rate among Millennials, which could end up offsetting
negative effects. Working against them and the generation that follows
them is the economic downturn expected from the 2020 COVID-19.
According to the OECD, in 2015, the average American household

had wealth of $411,044 while the median wealth was $56,724 and the
bottom quintile was negative $19,059—meaning that there are incredibly
high rates of debt among America’s poorest (OECD, 2018). Taking the
difference in wealth between the top 5% and the median household as a
share of the median wealth, the US has a wealth ratio of 90.7, which
is well above the OECD’s 18-country average of 20 (OECD, 2015).
In Canada, that ratio is only 15.1—almost 5 points below the average
(OECD, 2015: 249).
In Canada, wealth inequality is not nearly as high as in the US and
younger Canadians are much more economically secure than American
youth. In terms of markers of adulthood and accumulation of wealth,
Canadian Millennials are nearly the opposite of US Millennials. Despite
the extraordinary price of homes in Canada (where the average price is
almost six times higher than income), over half of Canadian Millennials
owned a home in mid-2015, and notably, they achieved this milestone at
a younger age than did their parents. As Caranci and Petramala (2015: 1)
point out, job conditions post-2008 recession were better for Canadian
Millennials than for American ones, and they have much lower student
debt than their US counterparts, who often have crushing burdens. Still,
the gap between the unemployment rates of youths and adults has not
decreased since the early 1990s. The 2008 recession, while not as bad
for Canadian Millennials as for American ones, exacerbated youth unem-
ployment, which in 2012 was 2.4 times that of workers aged 25–54, the
widest gap since 1977 (Bernard, 2013: 1). Globally, it is common for
youth unemployment to be higher than for older age groups, and it seems
that as Canadians enter their late twenties they have found job security.
While wealth inequality is not as big of an issue generally in Canada
as it is in the US, there are racial gaps. A study of university-educated
and Canadian-born groups found that those of ‘visible minority’ status
earned 87.4 cents for every dollar earned by Whites. Quebec had the
highest racial wage gap of any of the provinces (defined as gap in earnings
between ‘visible minorities’ and Caucasians), nearly 20%. The gap in the
province of Nova Scotia was only 7.3%. With the exception of Canadian-
born individuals of Japanese ethnic ancestry, ‘visible minorities’ earned
less than Whites (2017). Worst off were those of Latin American heritage
born in Canada, who earned 31.7% less than Whites (2017).
In sum, socioeconomic issues in the US are also demographic issues;
in Canada, the same dynamics exist but are much less pronounced. In
334 J. D. SCIUBBA
both, though, population ageing adds strains to the economic fortunes

of the various generations. In particular, the large size of the US and
Canadian Baby Boomer generations will have tremendous impact on
economic dynamics in both countries in the next several decades. Popu-
lation ageing in the US is not as intense as in Japan and Western Europe,
but although the US population is still growing due to both popula-
tion momentum and continued immigration, the growth rate of the US
workforce will still slow down. According to estimates by demographers
Passel and Cohn, adults aged 25–64 will grow only from 173 million in
2015 to 183 million in 2035. Although that number is positive, it is the
lowest since the Baby Boomers entered the workforce in the 1960s (ibid.,
2017). Because the US social security system is pay-as-you-go, the current
workers contribute to a pot of money from which retirees draw. When
the proportion of workers is declining relative to retirees, the system is
strained. As is the case for any ageing country, Canada will face rising
health care and pension costs over the next several decades. In both the
US and Canada, a wide gap between life expectancy and age of eligibility
for social services means that the entitlements systems are strained and
policymakers in both countries have shown little will or ability to narrow
the gap and make the systems more solvent.
By 2035, the youngest Baby Boomers will be 71 years old, meaning
they will all be eligible to draw social security benefits, and in fact, by
that time those on the upper end of the following generational cohort
(Generation X) will have approached retirement age. Whether they will
expect to retire in their 60s or expect to work into their 70s will depend
on several factors—cultural, economic and political.
4 Mobilization Capacity
In this and the following section, we turn our attention to politics. The
relative sizes of demographic groups can indicate what authors in this
volume (Vanhuysse & Goerres, this volume and other contributions) are
discussing as ‘mobilization capacity’, or the ability of demographic groups
to translate their numbers into political power. As we see in this section,
voting patterns reflect that youth are less likely to vote in elections than
are older people. The existence of that gap has remained steady over
time—the size of the gap, though, has fluctuated.
US voter turnout is extremely low compared with its OECD peers,

and in the US, mid-term voting (between general elections for the Pres-
ident) has far lower turnout rates across age groups than years in which
a president is being elected. In 2016 (a presidential election year), only
55.7% of the voting age population voted. There are also racial and ethnic
disparities: as Table 2 shows, Hispanics have the lowest voting rates of the
major racial groups in the US and Whites the highest.
Turnout is one aspect of mobilization; eligibility to vote is another.
Voter eligibility in the US is highly political and, as with wealth, corre-
lates with demographics. Compared to their overall percentage of the
US population, Hispanics are relatively disenfranchised because relatively
more are under age 18 (the US legal voting age) than are Whites and
because a higher proportion of Hispanics are non-citizens, and thus inel-
igible to vote. In 2012, Hispanics were 11% of eligible voters but 17% of
the US population. In contrast, Whites were overrepresented in the elec-
torate: 71% of eligible voters but only 63% of the US population (Frey,
2016). US Blacks are also underrepresented, but for a different reason.
The US is well known for having one of the highest felony conviction
and incarceration rates in the world, an issue that is both political and
demographic, as it disproportionately affects the Black population. One
in 13 Blacks has no voting rights due to felonies, versus 1 of every 56
non-Blacks (The Sentencing Project, 2017). In 2012, 69% of the US
Black population was eligible to vote, compared to 79% of Whites (Frey,
2016: 267–268). When non-citizens and ineligible felons are removed
from the equation and overseas voters are added, voter turnout of the
Table 2 US election data by race (select presidential election years)
Turnout rate 1992 2000 2008 2016

Non-Hispanic White 61.6 57.6 65.2 64.7
Non-Hispanic Black 50.6 52.9 69.1 59.9
Hispanic 41.5 38.9 46.5 44.9
Other 42.8 39.8 48.0 46.3
Share of electorate 1992 2000 2008 2016
Non-Hispanic White 84.9 81 76.6 73.6
Non-Hispanic Black 9.8 11.2 12.3 12.3
Hispanic 3.7 5.4 7.3 9.1
Other 1.7 2.4 3.8 5
Note Data from Current Population Survey, corrected for vote over report and non-response errors
Source McDonald (2018)
336 J. D. SCIUBBA
eligible population in 2016 is 3.6% higher than the number reported

in Table 2, at 59.3% (McDonald, 2018). In large part, that’s because
in 2016, 3,249,802 felons were ineligible to vote, the vast majority
non-White (The Sentencing Project, 2017). From this review, we can
conclude that mobilization capacity of Blacks and Hispanics in the US
is constrained by political institutions, namely by citizenship and felony
status and the lack of voting rights such statuses confer.
Mobilization capacity in the US is not just a racial issue, it is also an age
issue. In the US, youth consistently have lower turnout rates than older
voters, but the gap between older and younger citizens differs across elec-
tions. Youth were particularly inclined to show at the polls for the 2008
election of Barack Obama, as Table 3 shows. Still, in recent mid-term
(non-presidential) elections, turnout of voters under age 30 was close to
the lowest rate in the last 50 years. Baby Boomers’ voting rates were 30
percentage points higher than Millennials’ (Thompson, 2016). The gap
is even more pronounced at the local level, as researchers from Portland
State University found—the median age of voters in mayoral elections is
60 years (Keisling, 2015). To the extent that political power is concen-
trated in the hands of those who actually show at the polls, White, older
Americans have the lion’s share of influence in the US.
In the US, voter turnout also differs by educational level, with highly
educated voters overrepresented and the least educated underrepresented.
Those with post-graduate education turn out at the highest levels,
although as a share of the electorate they are generally under 15%, the
second smallest group. Those with less than high school education are
Table 3 US election data by age (select presidential election years)
Turnout rate 1992 2000 2008 2016

18–29 42.7 34.5 48.4 43.4
30–44 59 54 60.7 56.9
45–59 68 64.3 69.5 66.2
60+ 68 67.3 71 71.4
Share of electorate 1992 2000 2008 2016
18–29 17.7 14.3 17.1 15.7
30–44 33.1 30.3 24.8 22.5
45–59 23.6 28.9 30.6 28.2
60+ 26.6 26.5 27.6 33.6
Note Data from Current Population Survey, corrected for vote over report and non-response errors
Source McDonald (2018)
the smallest share of the electorate and have the lowest turnout rates of
any educational group, typically under a 40% turnout rate (McDonald,
2018). Since younger cohorts are more educated than older ones, if past
is precedent, then that generation may end up with high voter turnout
when they reach older ages, meaning that their mobilization capacity will
increase between now and 2040.
Although Millennials are on the cusp of becoming the largest gener-
ation in the electorate, they are far underrepresented in national elected
offices. People who were born after 1981 are 46% of the US population.
While in 2016 Millennials comprised 27% of the voting-eligible popula-
tion, just 4% less than Baby Boomers, as of 2018 there were no Millennials
in the US Senate, whose youngest member is 40-year-old Tom Cotton,
a Republican from Arkansas (Fry, 2018, 2018b). There were only five
elected Millennials in the House of Representatives, while there were
117 of Generation X, 270 of the Baby Boomers and 42 of the eldest
generation (the Silent Generation) (Frey, 2018). Boomers are far overrep-
resented at 62% of the House of Representatives although they only make
up 23% of the population. To the extent that having policymakers in place
who share one’s background confers political influence, the proportion
of representatives of different generations means younger generations are
absent from the echelons of power. However, we should recognize that
elected leaders represent the interests of all of their constituents, in theory,
and the demographics of the representative are not necessarily indicative
of their favouritism towards particular groups, age or otherwise.
Similar to Americans, Canadian youth also have lower voter turnout
than older Canadians and minority populations have lower turnout than
the White majority. Among Canadians aged 35 and older, only 10%
report not voting in federal and provincial elections, but 31% of those
aged 25–34 and 47% of those 18–24 claim not to vote. Only 14%
of majority Canadians report not voting but 29% of ‘visible minori-
ties’ do (Bilodeau & Turgeon, 2015: 4). There are competing research
findings on the role of minority status, though. Using a 2002 survey,
Bevelander and Penndakur (2009), for example, found that immigration
status and ethnicity are unimportant determinants of voting at the federal
and provincial levels, but that age, level of schooling and level of civic
engagement determined propensity to vote.
Lending support to the preceding claim, studies show that younger
Canadians feel less connected to political parties than do older Canadians,
and that proclivity intersects with immigration status as well (Bilodeau &
338 J. D. SCIUBBA
Turgeon 2015: 6). Of course, as the section on demographic context

showed, age and minority status are related, as ‘visible minorities’ tend
to be younger than majority Canadians. The effect of immigration status
dissipates over time: recent immigrants are less likely to vote than immi-
grants who have been in Canada at least 10 years. The latter group shows
no voting differences compared to the native-born population (Bilodeau
& Turgeon 2015).
In contrast to dynamics in the US, where minorities are often politically
marginalized, the high numbers of those with an immigrant background
in Canada elevate ‘visible minority’ status politically. Canada has a diverse
electorate—Elections Canada provides information in 26 heritage and 11
Aboriginal languages (Bevelander & Pendakur 2009). To be viable at the
polls, Canadian political parties have to demonstrate openness to immi-
gration issues. As one analyst argued, “[s]ince 40 percent of voters in
Canada are either first- or second-generation immigrants, any party that
questions the value of immigration for Canada would either sink in the
polls or have to quickly revise its message” (Hiebert, 2016: 11).
In sum, while the non-White populations are growing as a propor-
tion of Canada’s and America’s total populations, they have not expressed
themselves to the full extent of their voice by voting at the polls. ‘Visible
minority’ status in Canada is a less significant predictor of voting than in
the US and immigrant status may even confer some political privileges.
For Canada then, increasing diversity and a growing ‘visible minority’
population are likely to influence political outcomes. In the US, the disen-
franchisement of non-White populations may mean continued political
and economic marginalization over the next few decades.
5 Institutions
In both the US and Canada, population characteristics—such as age and
race—confer little political influence on their own. Instead, each country’s
particular political institutions magnify or minimize particular voices. In
the US, the two-party system and the Electoral College boost the voices
of rural and White Americans, with the opposite effect for residents of
large cities and for non-Whites. Canada’s federal structure gives greater
power and voice to certain regions and its residents, over others. Multicul-
turalism functions as an institution, shaping political discourse and policy
outcomes.
In the US, the two-party system of Democrats and Republicans gives

outsized influence to the rural, White population, which played the key
role in the 2016 presidential election of Republican Donald Trump, who
received 63.2% of the rural vote, compared to 31.3% for Democrat Hillary
Clinton. Trump’s vote share increased with increasing levels of rurality—
a pattern common for Republicans in recent decades. Such voters are
only 15% of the US population (and were about that percentage of voters
in 2016) but US institutions magnify their voices, as Donald Trump’s
successful candidacy shows. National distribution is one reason: more than
4 out of 10 rural persons live in the Southern US. These rural areas
have dire challenges, with declines in economic and social conditions,
and reductions in life expectancy (Monnat & Brown, 2017: 229). Trump
performed better in 2016 in counties with such struggles. Some scholars
have invoked reference group theory to explain these voting dynamics
because Whites are doing worse than their reference group (the previous
generation) and Blacks and Hispanics are doing comparatively better than
those Whites (Monnat & Brown, 2017: 233). If the lot of non-Whites
continues to improve relative to rural Whites, the latter group’s support
for Trump-like populist candidates will likely continue.
Another institution that magnifies the power of some demographic
groups and minimizes others is the US Electoral College. In the US, as
of 2018 there were 538 electoral votes apportioned among the 50 US
states according to the state’s total number of Congressional representa-
tives. Rather than awarding the presidential election to the winner of the
nationwide popular vote, a candidate must get half (270) of the electoral
votes in order to win. Dionne et al. have noted that “[i]n the case of the
2016 election, the Electoral College’s distance from the popular vote was
aggravated because so many Clinton voters cast ballots in large, reliably
Democratic states like California and New York. Her big margins in these
states had no payoff in the electoral vote” (ibid., 2017: 29). Because of
the electoral system, presidential candidates perform best when they focus
their efforts on key states, rather than on winning a pure majority of votes.
Unless the presidential election system changes, presidential politics will
likely look similar in 2040.
People of an immigrant background also have their power as a voting
bloc tempered by the US electoral system. Immigrants have dispropor-
tionately settled in US urban areas. In 2015, the top 20 metro areas held
65% of the nation’s total migrants, according to the Pew Research Center
(Lopez & Bialik, 2017). As the preceding section showed, this dilution
340 J. D. SCIUBBA
is in sharp contrast to dynamics in Canada, where political parties must

show sympathies with immigrant heritage to gain popular support. The
state of California had the largest number of immigrants as of 2015, nearly
11 million. However, while immigrants tended to settle in just four main
states—California, Florida, Texas and New York—after liberalization of
immigration policies in 1965, they began to disperse more widely across
the US. Indeed, since 1960, “the foreign-born populations in Georgia,
Nevada and North Carolina have increased more than 30-fold” (Pew
Research Center, 2015: 72–73). Between 2015 and 2040, these new
settlement patterns are likely to influence political control, although it
is as of now unclear how exactly.
Certainly, Canada’s start as a bilingual country with strong Franco-
phone elements shaped the country’s institutions from then to now.
In Canada, federalism significantly influences policymaking. One way is
by empowering and legitimizing the cultural and linguistic claims of
Quebec province, which has a strong French heritage. Population changes
in Quebec have played a role in both the call for an independence
referendum and the failure of that referendum to pass. When a 1995
referendum on sovereignty for Quebec failed to pass, with “no” votes
receiving 50.6%, many thought the issue disappeared, in part because of
demographic defeat of low-fertility francophones. Yet, the issue continues
to resurface in Canadian politics and separatist factions remain (Teitel-
baum & Winter, 1998: 117f.). In Quebec, these divisions “add another
layer of anxiety about numbers, relative power, and cultural hegemony
[…]” (Teitelbaum & Winter, 1998: 180).
In Canada, federalism helps shape the form immigration policies take.
For example, Quebec has had autonomy over its immigration and refugee
policy since 1991 (Hiebert, 2016: 13). But even beyond Quebec, provin-
cial and local governments and the private sector help decide whom to
admit and civil society helps provide integration services in partnership
with the government. According to Hiebert (2016: 13), “[t]his decen-
tralized approach has created a wider sense of ownership over immigration
and integration […] and greatly facilitates the legitimacy of immigration
policy and provides a kind of insulation against the potential demands of
populist groups […]”. The contrast with the US is striking, as Kaufmann
states: “As in other Western nations, there is an important constituency of
conservative and authoritarian voters in English Canada who want fewer
immigrants in the country. The difference is there are no political vehicles
channelling this at the federal level” (2018: 276). Again, the institution
of federalism, which devolves power away from the core, means that
different issues will resonate at the local versus national level and calls
for anti-immigrant measures or discrimination against non-Whites have a
harder time gaining traction in federal policymaking.
While federalism is an important institution in Canadian political
demography, the party system is less influential, particularly when
compared with the US. Much of the Canadian electorate is unattached
to particular political parties, as evidenced by the significant number of
Canadians who support different parties in federal and provincial poli-
tics and who have changed their party identifications over time. As
related by Kaufmann, Professor “Joshua Gordon at Simon Fraser Univer-
sity, remarks that the English-French divide splits the anti-immigration
constituency between Anglo-Canadians who vote for the Conservative
Party and French-Canadians who vote for the separatist Bloc Quebe-
cois. This means the federal Conservatives can’t pool Anglo and French
anti-immigration voters into a united voting bloc” (ibid., 2018: 277).
These party dynamics mean that Canada is likely to remain sanguine on
immigration over the next several decades.
One of the most influential institutions in Canada is multiculturalism,
a norm that pervades Anglo-Canada and has been codified as an official
government policy at the national level. As the Canadian Government
defines it, the purpose of multiculturalism is “ensuring that all citi-
zens keep their identities, take pride in their ancestry and have a sense
of belonging” (Government of Canada, 2018a: n.p.). Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau’s formal apology to the Tsilhqot’in chiefs for Canada’s
past atrocities was one example of many where Trudeau, as head of
state, has drawn attention to Canada’s First Nations as equal and impor-
tant members of Canada’s population. Bringing these two institutions,
federalism and multiculturalism, together, is controversial among many,
including French-Canadians, who “were not interested in being demoted
to one of many ‘cultures’” (Kaufmann, 2018: 275). In fact, Quebec
rejects multiculturalism and instead uses an integration policy of intercul-
turalism. As Kaufmann describes, “[w]here Quebec identity is territorial,
historical and cultural, the contemporary Anglo-defined Canadian iden-
tity is futuristic: a missionary nationalism centred on the left-modernist
ideology of multiculturalism” (ibid., 2018: 282).
Institutions in the US and Canada, then, seem to create opposing
politics of demographic change. In the US, the two-party system for a
long time remained neutral on immigration, with neither party adopting
342 J. D. SCIUBBA
an overly pro- or anti-immigrant stance. In recent years, though, and

in concert with electoral institutions, the Republican Party has capital-
ized on existing pockets of anti-immigrant sentiment among the citizenry
and scored important victories at the polls. Canada remains fairly pro-
immigration, in part because of its political institutions, namely federalism
and multiculturalism.
6 Rhetoric
The final area this chapter charts is the politics of population in political
rhetoric. Rhetoric surrounding changes in the ethnic and racial compo-
sition of the US has been consistently hostile, although that rhetoric
has only sometimes translated into restrictive laws, in part because it has
been difficult to get those changes passed through the US Congress. In
Canada, rhetoric has been more sanguine, in part because the influence
of multiculturalism is so pervasive—institutions matter.
In the US, there is a generational divide in opinions on immigration.
According to the Pew Research Center, “[y]ounger Americans are more
likely than older Americans to see the impact of immigrants on the U.S. in
the long run positively: 54% of those ages 18–29 say this, compared with
44% of those ages 30–49, 41% of those ages 50–64 and 39% of those
ages 65 and older” (ibid., 2015: 54). As in Canada, though, younger
generations are more ethnically and racially diverse than older ones. Since
people with an immigrant background comprise greater proportions of
younger generations, it makes sense that they would be more favourable
to immigration issues.
In recent US history, there is no greater example of hostile rhetoric
towards particular segments of the population than in the statements of
candidate, then President, Donald Trump. In his first month in office
in January 2017, President Trump issued a series of executive orders
on immigration. One of these was an order to build a border wall
with Mexico; construction commenced in February 2018. Another was
designed to prevent foreign terrorists from entering the US. In effect
from January 25 until 16 March 2017, the order reduced the number
of refugees that could be resettled in the US in 2017 to 50,000,
suspended the US refugee programme for 120 days, suspended the entry
of Syrian refugees indefinitely and suspended entry of those from Iran,
Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Historically, the US has reset-
tled more refugees than any other country, about 3 million since the
1980 creation of the refugee resettlement programme (Lopez & Bialik,

2017). Compared with countries bordering intense conflict, that number
is minuscule. The more remarkable aspect of this policy change is the shift
in tone surrounding immigration. Trump’s executive order restricting
entry of those who might be “foreign terrorists” became nicknamed the
“Muslim Ban” and discussed in the media as such. Trump has used incen-
diary language and slurs towards non-Whites throughout his time in the
political spotlight and in doing has found favour among his White, rural
base. Religion also plays a role in determining how the American popu-
lace reacts to ethnic change, as Trump has lamented that the US is moving
away from its Christian heritage (Whitehead et al., 2018: 5).
Discourse on multiculturalism4 in Canada has undergone significant
changes since the policy was enacted in 1971. Elke Winter, analysing
media and government discourses along with policy changes, found that
Québécois nationalism played a major role in constructing Canadian
multicultural identity in the 1990s, mainly in opposition to what Winter
found was termed “Quebec’s allegedly backward-oriented nationalism”
(ibid., 2015: 637–638). In the decades following, though, the rhetoric of
multiculturalism has been less about overall Canadian identity and more
about minority identity. As part of this ongoing change, “multiculturalism
is no longer viewed as dealing with majority–minority relations, but rather
portrayed as an ‘intra-minority affair’ to be managed by the dominant
group” (ibid.: 638). One group that has resisted the multicultural frame
is the First Nations, some of whom want to be recognized as separate
and have their land and other rights strengthened. Multiculturalism can
dilute their message (Guo & Guo, 2015). But with all of its problems,
Hiebert (2016) says multiculturalism at least provides a framework for
resolving cultural conflicts. There has been some backlash against Muslim
immigrants in Quebec but “[a]s elsewhere, it’s still taboo to openly
defend majority ethnicity or ethno-traditional nationalism. Instead, ethnic
conservatism is sublimated into state-nationalist and liberal rationales such
as protecting women’s equality, secularism or defending the language”
(Kaufmann, 2018: 284). Kaufmann says the salience of immigration in
Canada is best explained by “the boundaries of acceptable discourse in
English Canada”. In particular, Canada’s media is united “behind a set
4 In a multicultural model, immigrants are not expected to give up their customs and
culture wholesale and there is an expectation that the state and society will work to rectify
any disadvantages accorded by their minority status (Castles et al., 2013: 12).
344 J. D. SCIUBBA
of liberal norms”, with no conservative tabloid like Fox in the US (ibid.:

277–278).
Reitz argues that “[m]ost Canadians support the longstanding high
rates of immigration, and few see immigration as one of Canada’s most
significant problems. Majority Canadian support for high levels of immi-
gration has been remarkably stable over time and relatively unaffected by
recessions, the threat of terrorism and negative reports on specific immi-
grant groups” (ibid., 2011: n.p.). Population ageing is a serious concern
among Canadians, and intergenerational issues—if we count health care
and education as such—are the top concerns. In polls taken in 2016 and
2017, Canadians listed health care as the most important issue, followed
by education and then population ageing. A 2015 poll, taken during the
tenure of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, showed similar results, but
with jobs and the environment tied with ageing for third place (Nanos).
Immigration, in contrast, is not a top issue. Reitz found that Canadians’
personal beliefs that immigrants are an economic benefit and their support
for multiculturalism boost support for immigration. Reitz says that “many
Canadians would like immigrants to blend into society rather than form
separate communities; however, pride in multiculturalism helps to allay
this concern” (2011: n.p.). Hiebert agrees and adds that Canada still has
racial and ethnic tensions, but percentages of those with immigrant back-
grounds or non-European heritage are so high in some areas that it has
become normalized: “[…] in the contemporary era, cultural complexity
and change are no longer considered exceptional developments to be
feared” (Hiebert, 2016: 3). In 2014, Canada admitted permanent resi-
dents from almost 200 countries—that diversity means there is no single
conception of “the immigrant” and it helps dilute antagonism (ibid.: 3).
Hiebert also notes that Canada also does not have immigrant-related
terrorist attacks like Europe and US, so immigration as a national security
rhetoric is less present (ibid.: 4).
Of course, there is still some resistance to immigration in Canada,
particularly in French-Canada (Quebec). In 2011, the city of Gatineau,
Quebec “published a ‘statement of values’ for new immigrants that
cautioned against ‘strong odors emanating from cooking’ and […]
informed migrants that, in Canada, it was not OK to bribe city offi-
cials” (Mehta, 2017). In Canada’s 2015 election campaign, the press and
the major parties debated the circumstances in which Muslim women
could wear a veil (niqab), but the general public were mostly disinter-
ested in that issue or other cultural concerns (Clarke et al., 2017). For
the most part, the rhetoric around immigration in Canada is neutral, in

stark contrast to the US and most of Europe (Hiebert, 2016: 1–2).
Certainly, trends in rhetoric about political demography are hard to
project to 2040. We cannot know how technology will continue to
develop the media and communications landscape, nor how those changes
will interact with the rapidly shifting demographics of the US and Canada.
However, if we consider rhetoric as a product of demographic change
or a reaction to that change, then we can more confidently predict that
in concert with the economic changes outlined in an early section of
this chapter, and tempered by the political institutions discussed previ-
ously, rhetoric about demographic change in the US is likely to remain
inflammatory in the near future; Canada will be more insulated from such
fires.
7 Conclusion
In both the US and Canada, population change—assumptions about it,
fears of it and actual change—shapes policies about social security and
retirement, about family benefits and about immigration, among other
areas.
Racial tensions across the US have not abated even with greater
diversity of the population. As the opening vignette of this chapter
related, winds are shifting in the US towards acknowledging the legacy
of enslaving and then restricting the rights of Blacks. As with any cultural
change, though, resistance is strong. As the Confederate monuments have
been removed across the US, protests and counter-protests accompany
the cranes sent to remove the statues. If immigration continues at a robust
level, immigrants and their descendants will be an increasing proportion
of the US workforce as the large Baby-Boom generation continues to
move into retirement (Passel & Cohn, 2017). But if it does not, the
working-age population in the US will actually shrink by over 17 million
people between 2015 and 2035 (Passel & Cohn, 2017). Even though
the US is a populous country, it is remarkable that the US alone holds
one-fifth of the world’s total migrants (Pew Research Center, 2015). The
country has been a desirable destination since its genesis, but its identity
as a ‘country of immigration’ is still controversial. And those migration
numbers do not necessarily translate into more political power for non-
White groups. US demographics are changing so dramatically and rapidly
that American institutions will have to change in order to preserve—or
346 J. D. SCIUBBA
initiate—economic growth. The first large Baby Boomer cohort collected

its first social security checks in 2008, and to keep a sizeable labour force,
immigrants need to step into fill the spots on the manufacturing floor or
the engineer’s draft table.
Continuing high immigration is a policy choice, made by politicians
balancing demands from the political left and right, which simultane-
ously pressure politicians to open and close the borders. Comprehensive
immigration reform in the US is at an impasse because immigration does
not fall along the traditional left-right divide. Unions pressure Democrats
to restrict immigrants who might fill their jobs and provide non-union
employees. Nativists pressure Republicans to restrict immigration of non-
Whites and non-Christians who further ‘muddle’ American identity. We
can be sure that demographic change will continue to shape US politics,
but the direction in which it will do so is unclear.
The Canadian population is growing increasingly diverse, and identity
politics are fading compared with the US so issues around immigration
are much less political. Issues with how to simultaneously support ageing
Canadians and ensure economic growth, however, will grow in impor-
tance as Canada’s population ageing intensifies over the coming decades.
In both countries, the political institutions, particularly federalism and in
the US the electoral system, and the population distribution across the
territory will play a significant role in the policies that will be out at the
polls.
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holder.
CHAPTER 14
Population Ageing, Immigration

and the Welfare State: The Political
Demography in Western Europe
Elias Naumann and Moritz Hess
1 Introduction
From a global perspective, similar demographic forces are changing
Western European societies.1 Increasing life expectancy and low fertility
rates are the main endogenous drivers of population ageing. Moreover,
some countries might even enter a phase in which their populations shrink
since in-migration is too low to outweigh the effects of low fertility rates.
1 We define Western European countries from a political-institutionalist perspective,

which sometimes does not conform to the geographical description (see, for example,
Crouch, 2000). This includes the EU-15 plus Norway and Switzerland: Austria, Belgium,
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands,
Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain
(UK).
E. Naumann (B)
University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
e-mail: naumann@uni-mannheim.de
M. Hess
Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, Mönchengladbach, Germany

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_14
352 E. NAUMANN AND M. HESS
Yet migration to Western European countries itself has far-reaching social

and political consequences. In this chapter, we explore how these two
demographic trends—population ageing and migration—shape social and
political life in Western European societies and focus in particular on polit-
ical responses to these challenges. The main contribution of our chapter
lies in the combination of several strands in the literature—demographers,
political scientists, welfare state researchers and migration researchers—all
of whom focus on these demographic changes, but whose work has to
date remained rather separate (but see Vanhuysse & Goerres, 2012).
We start with the numbers and describe the demographic transition
of population ageing caused by declining fertility rates and increasing
life expectancy. We argue that, from a global perspective, all Western
European countries face similar challenges despite slight differences in
respective degrees of population ageing. Moreover, all Western European
countries turned into net migrant-receiving countries during the period
from 1990 until 2015. Hence, our case selection of three countries, Italy,
Germany and Sweden, is motivated by institutional differences in the
various welfare states and not by differences in their population trends.
We will focus on two dimensions of the theoretical framework which
are of relevance to many Western European states: first, how population
ageing affects the welfare state and the labour market (economic clout
and policy dimension), and second, how migration affects solidarity and
political conflict (the order dimension). Our analysis shows that demo-
graphic change shapes political dynamics in Western Europe. Yet despite
institutional differences between the welfare states, we find more similar-
ities than context-specific policy responses. In the conclusion, we discuss
to what extent these strategies of dealing with an ageing population are
sustainable or whether the welfare state needs to be further adapted in
future.
2 Population Ageing in Western Europe

Population trends in Western European countries are very similar in
global comparison. In 2020, they have old populations and continue
to age but in comparison, in particular to Asian countries like Japan or
China, this occurs at a moderate pace. The main reason for population
ageing in Western Europe is low fertility rates that have been declining
since the mid-1970s. Whereas most Western European countries still
had total fertility rates above 2.1 in 1970, fertility rates had dropped to
numbers below 2.1 by 1990. In particular, Southern European countries
14 POPULATION AGEING, IMMIGRATION AND THE WELFARE STATE … 353
have very low fertility rates (e.g. Italy with 1.35) and only some countries
like Sweden, Ireland or France come close to 2.0 children per woman in
2015. Since 1990, fertility rates have remained stable (or even recovered
slightly) but at a very low level (Table 1). These trends seem not to be
related to changing attitudes towards children as the intended and ideal
Table 1 Key population indicators of Sweden, Germany and Italy
1990 2015 2040
Migration
International in-migration as % of population Sweden 0.62 1.17
Germany 1.07 2.5
Italy 0.17 0.42
International out-migration as % of population Sweden 0.19 0.32
Germany 0.60 1.06
Italy 0.07
Net migration (in millions) (UN indicator) 5-year Sweden 0.13 0.40 0.15
indicator Germany 1.7 1.8 1.0
Italy −0.01 0.26 0.5
Stock of foreign born (as % of the total Sweden 9.2 16.8
population) Germany 7.5 14.9
Italy 2.5 9.7
Size of age groups (as % of population)
0–17 Sweden 21.8 20.2 20.1
Germany 19.14 16.07 15.9
Italy 20.9 16.5 15.2
65+ Sweden 17.8 19.6 23.9
Germany 14.9 21.1 30.0
Italy 14.9 22.4 33.6
80+ Sweden 4.3 5.1 8.2
Germany 3.7 5.7 9.9
Italy 3.3 6.7 11.4
65+/18–64 ratio Sweden 30.8 34.6 44.8
Germany 23.4 34.9 60.1
Italy 24.2 37.9 68.6
Absolute size of the population Sweden 8.6 9.8 11.3
Germany 78.96 80.69 77.3
Italy 57.0 59.8 58.1
Population density relative to CROP land area Sweden 0.33 0.26
(not general land area) Germany 0.15 0.14
Arable Land (hectares per person) Italy 0.16 0.11
(continued)
Table 1 (continued)
1990 2015 2040
City density (Urban Population % of total) Sweden 83.1 85.8

Germany 73.1 75.3
Italy 66.7 69.0
Fertility Rates Total fertility: live births per Sweden 1.91 1.90 1.92
woman (UN indicator) Germany 1.43 1.43 1.59
Italy 1.35 1.43 1.65
family size in Western Europe has remained quite stable at an average

of around 2.3 (Sobotka & Beaujouan, 2014). There are two factors that
contribute to this gap between intended and actual fertility rates: first, the
availability and more extensive use of contraceptives since the 1960s and
second, the postponement of motherhood mainly due to women’s educa-
tion and labour market participation, partnership changes and economic
uncertainties (Mills et al., 2011). Such a postponement first has a tempo
effect leading to temporarily lower fertility rates. But the postponement
of motherhood also has the effect that women have fewer children than
they would have liked or remain unintentionally childless. These trends
show up in the population pyramids of all three countries (Fig. 1), which
indicate that the 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts, i.e. those between 25
and 35 years old in 1990, are the largest and that the subsequently born
cohorts steadily decline. This so-called baby-boom generation will enter
retirement age between 2020 and 2030.
The second demographic trend contributing to population ageing
is increasing life expectancy. All three population pyramids grow taller
between 1990 and 2040 and life expectancy at age 65 increased from
82.1 years in 1990 to 85.3 years in 2010.
These trends have considerable consequences for the relative size of
age groups within a society (Table 1). First, the share of older people
is increasing. The old-age dependency ratio, i.e. the share of people 65
and older compared to the working-age population who are between 18
and 64, is increasing in all Western European countries. For example,
in Italy in 1990, there were 24 individuals aged 65 and over for every
100 persons aged 18 to 64. Germany had a similar old-age dependency
ratio in 1990 while in Sweden there were already 30 persons aged 65 and
Fig. 1 Demography in Germany, Italy and Sweden 1990, 2020 and 2040 (Note
Males are to the left [black], females to the right [grey]. Source Computations
by Richard Cincotta)
over for every 100 persons aged 18 to 64. The old-age dependency ratios
increased to around 35 in all three countries by 2015 and are projected
to further increase to 68 and 60 in Italy and Germany, respectively, by
2040, whereas Sweden’s population is ageing at a slower pace, with an
estimated old-age dependency ratio of 44.8 by 2040. In other words,
the relationship between people of working age compared to the popu-
lation in retirement age decreased from around 4:1 in 1990 in Italy and
Germany to a ratio of 3:1 in 2015 and might eventually drop below 2:1 in
Italy and Germany by 2040. Moreover, the composition of the age group
65 years and older will also change and the share of those 80 years and
older, the old-old, will increase. In 1990, only around 4% of the popu-
lation in all three countries were 80 years or older. By 2040, this share
is expected to double in Sweden (to 8.2%) and almost triple in Germany
(9.9%) and Italy (11.4%) (see Table 1).
In addition to fertility and mortality rates, migration is the third
factor shaping the demographic situation of a country. Concerning migra-
tion, we need to distinguish between countries that experienced strong
economic growth after the Second World War (WWII), such as the UK,
France, Germany, the Benelux and Scandinavian countries, and Southern
European countries such as Portugal, Spain and Italy. From 1950 until
the 1973 oil crisis, many migrants moved from the poorer Southern Euro-
pean countries to the economically more successful countries in Western
and Northern Europe. Migration was further encouraged by a number of
West European countries, like Belgium, Germany or France, who actively
started recruiting guest workers to address the labour shortage in the
course of the economic recovery after the Second World War. Migrants
also came from Turkey (mainly to Germany) and from former colonies to
the respective colonial ‘motherlands’ (like the UK, France or the Nether-
lands). This is also reflected in a liberalization of migration policies (de
Haas et al., 2016). With the end of the Cold War, a second wave of migra-
tion from Eastern to Western and also to Southern Europe began in the
1990s (see Vanhuysse and Perek-Bialas, this volume). Political instability
and armed conflicts, for example in Syria and many African countries,
became the main drivers of migration flows in the 2000s and increas-
ingly in the 2010s (Bacci, 2018). These trends are also apparent in the
migration flows and the stock of foreign born in the three countries.
Sweden and Germany already had an above average share of foreign born
in 1990 (9.2 and 7.5%) and in-migration has always been higher than out-
migration (Table 1). Consequently, the share of foreign born increased
to 16.8% in Sweden and to 14.9% in Germany by 2015. In contrast, only
2.5% of the population was foreign born in Italy in 1990 and net migra-
tion was negative; that is, out-migration was higher than in-migration.
This pattern changed in the late 2000s and the share of foreign born in
Italy almost tripled from 3.7% in 2000 to 9.7% in 2015 (UN Population
Division, 2017).
With fertility rates below 2.1 and without external migration flows,
populations would shrink. While migration has the potential to balance
this effect and to ensure that population size is not declining (Bacci,
2018), population simulations show that the in-migration necessary to
halt population ageing exceeds actual migration flows by far (Bijak et al.,
2008). It is therefore unlikely that replacement migration will reach levels
which would substantially change the support ratios described above.
Nevertheless, migration has always been and still is one important aspect
that has the potential to both affect the composition of the working
population in the short or medium term and affect the composition and
heterogeneity of a population more generally.
3 The Challenges of Population

Ageing for the Welfare State
As described above, all Western European countries follow a very similar
demographic transition. After a period in the 1970s and 1980s with
comparatively few children to care for and a low old-age dependency
ratio, these countries now entered a transition phase in which support
ratios increased. Hence, population ageing as a result of decreasing
fertility rates and increasing life expectancy has become an unavoidable
prospect for all Western European countries (Coleman, 2006) as migra-
tion and eventually increasing fertility rates will continue to affect the
pace of ageing. Pensions, health care and long-term care are particu-
larly affected by population ageing. Moreover, pensions and healthcare
spending are already the most expensive areas of the welfare state and the
average total expenditure in Western Europe amounts to around 13% of
the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on pensions (around 2 trillion $) and
10% of the GDP on health care (around 1.6 trillion $). Increases in the
costs of health care and pension expenditures therefore have the poten-
tial to strongly affect state budgets and the economy as a whole. The
increasing costs of the pension system arise from the expected increase in
the number of pensioners. At the same time, current contributions to the
pension system will decline if the labour force is shrinking and this trend is
of course accelerated by generous early retirement pathways which existed
in most European countries in the 1990s (Ebbinghaus, 2006).
Support ratios are a good means of illustrating this trend. Whereas
in 2015 about 3–3.5 persons of working age were responsible for one
person of pensionable age, this support ratio is estimated to go down to
2:1 or even lower by 2040. As for the costs of health care and long-term
care, it is mainly the share of the old-old, i.e. those who are 80 years
and older, which seem to matter most. This period of life is characterized
by increased risks of physical dysfunctionality and psychological pressures
testing the limits of resilience (Higgs & Gilleard, 2015). It is estimated
that per capita healthcare spending on the old-old will triple compared
to healthcare spending for the old, aged between 65 and 74 (Jackson,
2006). As we have outlined above, increasing life expectancy will lead to
a doubling of the share of the old-old between 2015 and 2040.
Hence, under the current circumstances, population ageing would
indeed threaten the financial sustainability of the welfare state and many
see reforms as inevitable (e.g. World Bank, 2004). Yet comparative polit-
ical studies suggest that it is very difficult to reform and retrench pensions
and healthcare systems (Tepe & Vanhuysse, 2009, 2010). The main
reason is that such a pro-elderly bias in spending is expected to find polit-
ical legitimacy as health care and pensions are the most popular areas
of the welfare state (Brooks & Manza, 2006; Ebbinghaus & Naumann,
2018). Moreover, preferences of older voters and their interests are
expected to gain more political weight in the reform process as they
grow in number and are also politically more involved reflected in a
higher turnout among the elderly (Goerres, 2010). Party competition for
these voters (Immergut et al., 2007) and also trade unions defending
acquired pension rights (Häusermann, 2009) create further barriers to
reform. According to the new politics argument, pension policies are path
dependent (Pierson, 1996) as the introduction of a pay-as-you-go pension
system has created large groups of current beneficiaries and people of
working age who also expect to benefit from pensions. Backed by such
a generational contract, it is very unlikely that radical, path-departing
reform is feasible. Of course, there is some institutional variation in
the degree of these challenges and the financial sustainability of social
insurance countries is more sensitive to the demographic change. While
at the same time it seems also more difficult to reform these pension
systems whose budgets are mainly controlled by the government (Bonoli
& Shinkawa, 2006).
Yet there are some doubts about such an inevitable, demographically
determined pension crisis. Whereas old-age dependency ratios are mostly
predictable for the next decades and population ageing is inevitable, the
mere numerical ratios between old and young do not determine the
extent of the financial burden on the welfare state. It is instead economic
dependency ratios that matter, i.e. the ratio of employed persons to the
inactive population (Ebbinghaus, 2016). These ratios can be improved
if labour force participation of the elderly increases, for example by
closing early retirement pathways or by encouraging working beyond
retirement age. Also, an earlier entry into the workforce after education
and increasing female participation rates have the potential to increase
the share of the active population. Empirical evidence also shows that
such (incremental) reforms have been possible even in pension policy
(Ebbinghaus, 2011; Häusermann, 2009). Finally, it is even possible to
change the economic dependency ratios by increasing immigration rates.
Although potentially unpopular, it could shift the old-age dependency
ratios towards the younger generation. However, such policy will have
an effect not only on the country to which people at a younger age will
migrate, but also on the countries they are leaving. Their absence as part
of the labour force and as carers of children and older relatives will be felt
(Lutz & Palenga-Möllenbech, 2012).
More generally, economic theory suggests that there are other means
to address labour shortages and a decreasing workforce. Investing in
physical capital, attracting skilled migration or shifting production abroad
promises productivity gains and economic growth which have the poten-
tial to outweigh the unfavourable economic dependency ratios (Schulz,
2002). Most of the more pessimistic commentaries might also be focused
too narrowly on monetary aspects alone. With increasing life expectancy,
there is usually an increase in healthy life expectancy (Salomon et al.,
2012) and thus older people have the potential to remain active and
productive beyond paid work if policies allow flexible pathways to retire-
ment (Schulz, 2002). Related to this, Gál et al. (2018) show that the
often-claimed pro-elderly bias of European welfare states does not capture
the actual transfers between generations. Focusing not only on public
budgets but also on transfers of time and money within families, children
receive more than twice as many per capita resources than older persons.
4 Changing Pension and Family

Policies in Italy, Germany and Sweden
As we have outlined above, the main focus of this chapter is on the polit-
ical consequences of demographic change for the welfare state. We aim
to explore whether political reactions to comparable demographic trends
differ depending on the existing welfare institutions. Hence, we have
chosen three country cases, Germany, Sweden and Italy, representing

different types of welfare states. Germany represents the continental-
conservative, Sweden the social-democratic–Scandinavian and Italy the
familiaristic-southern. In terms of political reactions, we mainly focus on
policies in two areas of the welfare state, pensions and family policy, which
are most relevant to political demography. The first is under long-term
financial pressures from demographic ageing as the pay-as-you-go pension
systems rely on a balanced ratio of contributors and beneficiaries. The
latter is a policy that allows for alteration in fertility rates—in the case of
the three countries to increase them.
Germany has a prototypical Bismarckian pension system with statutory
old-age income security, which is financed on a pay-as-you-go principle
and covers about 80% of the employed population (Schulze, 2009). From
the late 1980s on, concerns were raised that this pension system was
financially not sustainable due to population ageing, as described in the
previous section. This resulted in several reforms aimed at delaying retire-
ment and extending working lives (Goerres & Vanhuysse, 2012). Several
early retirement options were abolished, made financially less attractive or
the eligibility criteria tightened (Buchholz et al., 2013). The official retire-
ment age is to be increased from 65 to 67. Furthermore, there are efforts
towards privatization and marketization in old-age security by means of
public subsidies for occupational and private pension schemes (Ebbing-
haus & Hofäcker, 2013). Finally, training programmes and measures for
life-long learning have been implemented aimed at increasing older work-
ers’ workability. These pensions and labour market reforms seem to have
been effective, as older workers’ employment rates and the effective retire-
ment age in Germany are increasing (Buchholz et al., 2013). However,
it should be acknowledged that there might be other reasons for the
increase in older workers’ employment rates as well. The German labour
market has been comparably robust across all age groups. In addition,
cohort effects are resulting in older workers that are healthier and more
qualified than their predecessors. Thirdly, female labour market participa-
tion has increased overall and in particular among older workers (Hess,
2016).
This steep increase in the women’s employment rate in Germany
can be partly explained by a shift in family policies. The male bread-
winner model—in which the husband is in paid employment, while the
wife specializes in domestic work—was one main principle of the (West)
German welfare state until the early 1990s. This has been changing slowly
but steadily. Germany has experienced a substantial expansion in child-

care, in particular for children younger than three years (Morgan, 2013).
The aim is to make the reconciliation of childcare and work easier and,
thus, increase the fertility rate. In addition, parental-leave periods with a
wage replacement of about 67% have been extended in the last decade to
12 months and even 14 months when both parents take leave (Bünning,
2015).
Pension policies in Italy have shifted in a similar way to those in
Germany, however less fundamentally. Like in Germany, Italian pension
and labour market policies were characterized by several early retire-
ment schemes, which allowed older workers to retire well before the
official retirement age with only small pension reductions. In particular,
the disability pension was used as a ‘bridge’ to retirement (Contini &
Rapiti, 1999). Mirroring the development in Germany, several reforms
were implemented from the mid-1990s on, to counteract the financial
pressures that this policy of early retirement in combination with popu-
lation ageing was putting on public pensions. The official retirement age
was increased to 67 and the minimum period of contribution require-
ments was raised from 35 to 40 years (Bertolini et al., 2016). In addition,
the official retirement age will be linked to life expectancy from 2021 on.
This means that if life expectancy increases, the official retirement age
will automatically increase also (Lallo & Raitano, 2018). These efforts
have been complemented by marketization and privatization measures to
strengthen the occupational and private pensions, which are supported by
public subsidies (Bertolini et al., 2016).
In both Italy and Germany, family policies were characterized by a
male breadwinner model, which made it difficult for women to reconcile
work and care work (Lewis et al., 2008). Parental leave payments and
family allowances are comparable to those of other Central and Southern
European countries (Bünning & Pollmann-Schult, 2016). This leads to
low employment rates among married women and mothers in particular,
especially in Southern Italy (Oliver & Mätzke, 2014). One reason for this
is the different provision of childcare in Northern and in Southern Italy;
while it is comparatively high in the North, it is low in the South.
Pension policies in Sweden differ substantially from those in Germany
and Italy. Employment rates of older workers have always been rather
high and have never fallen as low as in Germany and Italy, despite
the use of disability pensions as a measure of early retirement policies,
particularly during the economic crisis of the early 1990s (Wadensjö,
2002). Swedish policymakers still acknowledged the financial pressure

stemming from population ageing and in addition wanted to cut the
national budget and retrench the cost of social insurance (Fleckenstein &
Lee, 2014). They aimed at extending working lives with stricter eligibility
rules for the disability pension and requalification programmes for older
unemployed persons (König & Lindquist, 2016). Furthermore, a flex-
ible statutory retirement was introduced. Older workers can draw their
pensions between 61 and 67, but with actuarial pension reduction for
early retirement and a higher pension for late retirement. The returns to
replacement rate are comparably high for the ages 61 to 67 given older
workers’ strong incentives to delay their labour force exit (ibid.). The
closing of early retirement options and the flexibilization of the statutory
retirement age were complemented with a strong tradition of life-long
learning and qualification also at a higher age which sustains and even
improves workability as well as the employability of older workers (König
et al., 2016).
Sweden also has high female employment rates in older age groups.
The main reason is the generally high level of gender equality in Sweden.
In comparison with other European countries, the male breadwinner
model is not as important in Sweden and in more families both partners
have been in employment, while childcare and also long-term care were
provided by the state (Sundström, 2003). This is also reflected in Swedish
family policies. Parents have an unconditional right to daycare services for
children in pre-school age resulting in one of the highest enrolment rates
in Europe with over 90% of children between 3 and 6 years and over
50% of children from between 0 and 3 years in day care (Gehringer &
Klasen, 2017). In addition, parental leave pay is also comparably generous
(Sundström, 2003).
In summary, from a global, broad perspective, we observe similar
trends in the pension and family policies in all three countries, policies
that are mainly aimed at increasing employment rates among women and
among the elderly. Pension policies have undergone a shift from policies
of early retirement to policies of extending working lives. Family policies
have shifted from a principle of a male breadwinner model to a family
in which both parents work. A high coverage for childcare and more
generous parental leave policies have been introduced to facilitate the
reconciliation of work and childcare—and to increase fertility rates. Yet
there are also differences in how countries have reacted to population
pressures and these are linked to the institutional differences between
the respective countries. The most generous family and parental leave
policies are found in Sweden, whereas Italy lags behind in this respect.
These differences are possibly largely a result of the existing differences
in gender norms which are more favourable in Sweden. As for pension
policies, Sweden has also implemented the most progressive measures to
encourage longer working lives, e.g. flexible arrangements for the tran-
sition from work into retirement and policies to allow life-long learning.
In contrast, Germany introduced more liberal measures to enforce higher
participation rates among older workers, e.g. by increasing the retirement
age and closing early retirement options. One reason for this difference
might be that German policymakers lagged behind in finding responses
to the demographic pressures and hence chose measures that promised to
have more immediate effects on participation rates.
While we mainly focused on policy reactions here, the demographic
trends might also affect the politics of the welfare state. It is often argued
that an age-bias in policies, i.e. policies benefiting young families and at
the same time encouraging older workers to work longer, might enforce
a conflict between generations (Lynch, 2006). Empirically, however, the
potential for such an inter-generational conflict over welfare-state resource
seems unlikely in Europe (Hess et al., 2017) as the inter-generational
solidarity is rather strong.
5 Migration, Public Attitudes

and the Welfare State
Migration has always been one important factor affecting the demo-
graphic composition of Western European societies—and as many coun-
tries have become net migration-receiving countries, immigration is also
one factor which is likely to be of high relevance in addressing antic-
ipated labour shortages in particular and the challenges of population
ageing for the welfare state more generally. As a result, the ethnic hetero-
geneity of European countries is increasing, and this would occur even
if in-migration did not increase further. In the following, we summarize
research on how migration and increasing heterogeneity affect European
societies. We will first focus on attitudes towards migration and then
explore how migration and support for the welfare state are linked.
Migration policy is at the top of the European political agenda espe-
cially since the so-called refugee crisis in 2015, when high numbers
of migrants and asylum seekers travelled by sea and land to Europe
and many died making the dangerous journey. Albeit there are some
moderated tones that praise the potential positive externalities of migra-
tion in times of demographic change (United Nations, 2000), the
debate was largely dominated by populist outcries warning that migra-
tion increases competition for jobs and increases the tax burden. The
rise of right-wing parties in most Western European countries suggests
that anti-immigration messages tap into widespread anxieties among the
public (e.g. Ivarsflaten, 2008; Mudde, 2013). Theoretically, two motives
underlie attitudes towards migration: culture and identity concerns, but
also natives’ economic self-interests, for example tax concerns or perceived
competition with migrants for jobs (Ivarsflaten, 2008; Naumann et al.,
2018). Empirical research has consistently shown cultural aspects to
shape immigration attitudes (see, e.g., Ivarsflaten, 2008; Sides & Citrin,
2007). For example, valuing cultural homogeneity proves an especially
strong predictor (Ivarsflaten, 2008). Yet objective indicators of individual-
level economic self-interest show little explanatory power (Naumann
et al., 2018). Most importantly though, country-level characteristics
such as immigration levels or economic conditions did not foster anti-
immigration attitudes (Dunn & Singh, 2011; Mudde, 2013, but see also
Semyonov et al., 2006). Mudde (2013: 1) concludes that the political
impact of populist right-wing parties “is largely limited to the broader
immigration issue, and even here populist right wing parties should be
seen as a catalyst rather than initiators, who are neither a necessary nor a
sufficient condition for the introduction of stricter immigration policies”.
A second much debated concern about migration is that ethnic diver-
sity might reduce social cohesion and solidarity and would lead to a
decline in support for redistributive welfare state measures (Alesina &
Glaeser, 2004). Moreover, migrants usually have a lower level of educa-
tion than the native population face a higher risk of being unemployed
(Boeri et al., 2002) and are often perceived as a net fiscal burden (Gilens,
1995), which would lead to a decline in support for redistributive welfare
state measures. Empirical evidence though does not support these claims
about the general negative impact of ethnic diversity on social cohesion
and solidarity (van der Meer & Tolsma, 2014). Studies on solidarity and
welfare state support show that the experience of migration at the local
or occupational level matters for welfare state support (Burgoon et al.,
2012; Eger, 2009; Schmidt-Catran & Spies, 2016)—but there are consid-
erable doubts whether migration per se leads to an erosion of welfare state
support in European countries (Naumann & Stoetzer, 2018).
One reason why migration might not lead to a decline of welfare state
support in general is the increasing prevalence of chauvinistic welfare atti-
tudes. Natives who want to prevent redistribution to the outgroup of
immigrants might favour the introduction of exclusionary measures so
that migrants do not get access to welfare benefits. A more implicit version
of welfare chauvinism is the preference for welfare programmes to which
migrants do not have access over programmes from which they already
benefit. Yet the empirical evidence provides little support that migration
and ethnic heterogeneity are related to support for welfare chauvinism
(Mewes & Mau, 2012; Reeskens & van Oorschot, 2012). Römer (2017)
also demonstrates that generous welfare states are more likely to grant
immigrants access to welfare benefits whereas less generous welfare states
are more likely to exclude immigrants from access.
In summary, there is limited evidence that migration indeed leads to
stronger opposition to migration and also little evidence that migration
results in an erosion of solidarity and public support for the welfare state.
Yet in times of increasing migration, populist right-wing parties have the
opportunity to increase the salience of migration. Tapping into already
existing concerns about the perceived consequences of increased ethnic
heterogeneity might lead to the emergence of new conflict lines some-
times cross-cutting the old primarily political cleavage over economic
conflicts.
6 Conclusion
We set out to explore the political and social consequences of the two
dominant population trends in Western Europe: migration and popula-
tion ageing. We have shown that Western European countries face similar
pressures in this respect, at least from a global perspective. Increasing age
dependency ratios will increase costs for the welfare state, in particular
for pensions and care, and might also lead to (skilled) labour short-
ages. In-migration is too low to balance these demographic trends. Yet
migration has itself become a politicized topic with unclear consequences
for the politics of the welfare state. Hence, public perceptions of migra-
tion but also public perceptions of population ageing shape the political
opportunities to further adapt the welfare state in future. Our anal-
ysis of three countries shows that policy reactions in the most affected
areas of the welfare state—pensions and family policies—are comparable
across Western European countries. This suggests that existing institu-

tional differences have less effect on how countries react to demographic
pressures. Yet all three countries only gradually re-calibrate their welfare
systems. Moreover, changes in family policies only very slowly have an
effect on fertility rates (if at all). Hence, low fertility rates, shrinking
populations and increasing dependency ratios will continue to shape the
demography of Western European countries in the coming decades. We
therefore expect a continuous need to adapt the welfare state to these
changing circumstances in future. Policy measures in this vein include
adaptations of the legal retirement age and active ageing policies to
enhance older workers’ abilities to remain in the workforce. This also
includes family and labour market policies which help to reconcile work
and family, in particular for women. In this respect, the continuing high
popularity of the welfare state shows that the public perceives it as a
powerful tool to address the demographic challenges facing our societies.
But such a high level of popularity also makes far-reaching reforms diffi-
cult, and it remains to be seen whether gradual adjustments of the welfare
state will be sufficient to address the challenges posed by demographic
changes.
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holder.
CHAPTER 15
The Political Demography of Missed

Opportunity: Populations and Policies
in a Younger but Faster-Ageing East Central
Europe, 1990–2040
Pieter Vanhuysse and Jolanta Perek-Białas
1 Political Demography in Postcommunist

Europe: A Long Demographic
Window of Opportunity, Now Closed
This chapter analyses the political and policy repercussions of recent,
current and predicted demographic changes in postcommunist East
Central Europe (henceforth ECE). Countries in this region are united by
P. Vanhuysse (B)
Department of Political Science, Danish Institute for Advanced Study (DIAS),
and Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics (CPOP-SAMF),
University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
e-mail: vanhuysse@sam.sdu.dk
J. Perek-Białas
Institute of Sociology and Center for Evaluation and Analysis of Public Policies,
Jagiellonian University,
Cracow and Warsaw School of Economics, Cracow, Poland

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_15
374 P. VANHUYSSE AND J. PEREK-BIAŁAS
a common communist past. But more than thirty years after the fall of the
Iron Curtain, they are today remarkably diverse as regimes of social policy
(Cerami & Vanhuysse, 2009; Kuitto, 2016), of political economy (Bohle
& Greskovits, 2012; Pop & Vanhuysse, 2004), of demography (Sobotka
& Fürnkranz-Prskawetz, 2020), and, as this chapter shows, of political
demography. We focus especially but not exclusively on four ECE cases:
Hungary (population size 9.7 million), Latvia (1.92 million), Poland
(37.9 million) and Romania (19.4 million). The latter two countries are
the largest in ECE. The first three countries have been EU member
states since 2004, Romania only since 2010. Like the rest of ECE, all
four countries have seen a marked shift from demographically relatively
younger populations around the fall of communism to fast-ageing soci-
eties approaching a nearly reversed demographic pyramid structure well
before mid-century (Fig. 1; see also Goerres et al., 2020).
The ECE demographic context, while perhaps not as tragic as the
severe drops in male life expectancy in some post-Soviet republics
(Kazimov & Zakharov, this volume), is in some respects dramatic, too.
As a result of the uncertainties, changing family values and material
hardships generated by the postcommunist transition, fertility rates have
fallen sharply and have remained low well into the twenty-first century
(Fr˛atczak, 2011; Sobotka, 2003). This is visible in Fig. 1 in the shrinking
of the bases of the population pyramids between 1990 and 2020. Specif-
ically, at the beginning of the 1990s, the total fertility rate (TFR) was
2.06 for Poland, 1.83 for Romania and 1.87 for Hungary 1.87 (Euro-
stat database, 2019). It had dropped to much lower levels still by 2000:
respectively, 1.37, 1.27 and 1.31.1 In addition, since 1990, many ECE
societies have had to cope with rising life expectancy at birth and, notably
in the Baltic states, Romania and Bulgaria, very significant outmigration.
Throughout the post-1990 period, these demographic trends have often
fluctuated significantly, and even reversed, as a result of changing external
conditions (Sobotka & Fürnkranz-Prskawetz, 2020).
All three trends—decreasing fertility, rising life expectancy and signif-
icant outmigration—have had a tremendous impact on demographic
trajectories and population pyramids, and will continue to do so in the
1 For Latvia, the TFR (available only from 2000) was 1.25. After joining the EU, the
TFR increased somewhat but remained below replacement level (2.1). By 2015, it stood
at 1.32 in Poland, at 1.45 in Hungary, at 1.62 in Romania and 1.7 in Latvia (Eurostat
database, 2017, 2019). See furthermore Sobotka and Fürnkranz-Prskawetz (2020).
15 THE POLITICAL DEMOGRAPHY OF MISSED OPPORTUNITY: … 375
Fig. 1 Population pyramids for Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Romania for 1990,
2020 and 2040 (Note Males are to the left [black], females to the right [grey].
Source Computations by Richard Cincotta)
next decades. Until around 2010–2015, Eastern Europe has been signif-
icantly younger than Western Europe (on which see Naumann and Hess,
this volume). The old-age dependency ratio (henceforth OADR; the
number of 65plussers as a share of those aged 18–64) has been rising
steeply and steadily since at least 1990 in the Baltic states, Slovenia,
Romania and Bulgaria, but from relatively low levels. And it only started
increasing significantly, albeit fast now, as late as 2010–2015 in the
four Visegrad countries (Poland, Hungary and the Czech and Slovak
republics) (see also Table 1). These Visegrad Four thus benefited from
a particularly long and ample demographic window of opportunity to
reform their policy models to better prepare for the widely predicted
population ageing ahead. Even as recently as 2015, the average OADR
for the ‘Western’ EU-15 member states as a whole was 32.7, but still
only 26.7 for the new ‘Eastern’ EU members combined. All this is now
changing fast. By 2050, the OADR is projected to increase by 25.3%
points for the ‘Western’ EU-15 and by nearly 30 points for the ‘Eastern’
EU-11. By mid-century, ECE ageing processes will have essentially caught
up with Western Europe, at OADR values of, respectively, 56.6 and 58
(European Demographic Datasheet, 2016). For instance, the OADR is
expected to nearly double in Hungary and to more than double in Latvia,
Poland and Romania between 2015 and 2040, to reach, respectively, 40,
42, 43 and 47 (Table 1).
Poland, long one of Europe’s youngest societies, is now fast becoming
one of its oldest. Compared to 1990, median age will have increased
by 2040 by, respectively, 11, 14, 15 and 18 years in Hungary, Latvia,
Romania and Poland. All four countries will have seen their population
size shrink by then. Table 1 also sketches further components of the fast-
changing demographic landscape in ECE over half a century. Between
1990 and 2040, the share of the oldest-old (aged above 80) will have
more than tripled in Hungary and Latvia, and more than quadrupled in
Romania and Poland. There will be more than three million Poles aged
above 80 by 2040—more than the entire population of Latvia. The share
of the electorally crucial group of 65plussers will have almost doubled in
Hungary (to reach 25%), more than doubled in Latvia (to reach 26%),
and will have gone up two and a half times in Romania and Poland (to
reach, respectively, 25 and 26%). Population structures in 1990, 2015
and 2040 are shown in Fig. 1. In the decades ahead, in all four cases
smaller young cohorts will need to support much larger old and very old
Table 1 Overview of the demographic situation in selected countries of East

Central Europe in 1990/1995, 2015 and with projections for 2040
Indicators Country 1990 2015 2040
International migrant stock Hungary 3.35 4.56 X

as % of population Latvia 24.25 13.35 X
Poland 2.95 1.60 X
Romania 0.58 1.16 X
Immigration as % of Hungary X 0.59 X
population Latvia X 0.48 X
Poland X 0.57 X
Romania X 0.67 X
Emigration as % of Hungary X 1.48 X
population Latvia X 0.20 X
Poland X 0.68 X
Romania X 0.98 X
Size of age groups 0–17 as Hungary 25.02 17.46 16.45
% of population Latvia 25.61 17.62 16.86
Poland 29.74 17.92 14.41
Romania 28.74 18.68 17.00
Size of age groups 18–35 as Hungary 24.73 22.94 X
% of population Latvia 25.19 23.54 X
Poland 25.39 26.33 X
Romania 26.64 23.20 X
Size of 65+ as % of Hungary 13.45 17.49 24.81
population Latvia 11.87 19.28 25.9
Poland 9.95 15.61 25.93
Romania 10.40 16.99 25.18
Size of 80+ as % of Hungary 2.5 4.03 7.76
population Latvia 2.7 4.85 7.86
Poland 2.0 3.99 9.3
Romania 1.79 4.15 7.39
Median age Hungary 36.40 41.69 47.65
Latvia 34.65 42.53 48.20
Poland 32.21 39.69 50.17
Romania 32.57 41.25 47.56
Old-age dependency ratio Hungary 22.44 27.70 39.7
65+/18–64 (×100) Latvia 21.77 30.75 41.55
Poland 17.95 23.20 42.8
Romania 19.03 26.45 46.5
Absolute size of the Hungary 10,385,060.55 9,855,023.438 8,784,323
population Latvia 2,663,985.107 1,970,503.052 1,692,476
Poland 38,195,257.81 38,611,792.97 35,286,450
Romania 23,489,361.33 19,511,324.22 16,448,540
(continued)
Table 1 (continued)
Indicators Country 1990 2015 2040
Population density: persons Hungary 114.63 108.07 96.73

per square km Latvia 42.83 32.03 26.08
Poland 123.94 124.95 113.16
Romania 102.05 86.35 75.87
Urban population as % of Hungary 65.838 71.227 X
total Latvia 69.25 67.382 X
Poland 61.27 60.539 X
Romania 53.217 54.564 X
Urban population density Hungary X X X
(people per sq. km of urban Latvia 562.52 433.09 X
land area (1990 and 2010) Poland 765.56 759.48 X
Romania 791.76 698.87 X
Source Goerres et al. (2020), World Bank and own calculations based on Population (total) &
Agricultural land (sq. km)—World Bank, own calculation from Eurostat database
Remark If data for 1990 not available in some cases data from 1995 are presented in Table 1
cohorts, who, in addition, are likely to become even more powerful elec-
toral groups (see Sect. 2). All in all, this adds up to a picture of dramatic
demographic changes that, one would expect, contains multiple reper-
cussions for politics and policies. Adopting a political demography lens
(Vanhuysse & Goerres, 2012; this volume), this chapter discusses how
these developments have affected the politics of age group-relevant poli-
cies such as family and work-family reconciliation policy, pension policy
and ageing policy.
2 “Pensioners’ Welfare States”

on the Path to Premature Pro-elderly Bias:
Political Push Before Demographic Pull
With the exception of significant Russian minorities in two of the Baltic
states, ECE is a region of relatively ethnically homogeneous societies.
Among our four cases, Poland is the most homogeneous country by
ethnicity, while Latvia has about 25% of ethnic Russians (Table 1). Yet
this comparative absence of ethnically heterogeneous populations has not
altogether prevented ethnically motivated population politics in ECE.
Political economy (Alesina & La Ferrara, 2005) and social capital theory
(Putnam, 2007) have documented the manifold negative effects of ethno-

linguistic heterogeneity, both on public policies and on socio-economic
variables such as productivity, growth, public good provision and other
forms of social solidarity. The power strategies of the new elites in early
postcommunist Latvia (as in Estonia) have actively taken advantage of
the ethnic cleavages within the population by proactively remodelling the
distribution of transition winners and losers along ethnic lines, as part of
a post-Soviet nation-building project and to the disadvantage of Russian
minority populations (Laitin, 1998). Baltic powerholders have designed
public policies in ways that made existing levels of ethno-linguistic hetero-
geneity politically more salient, at the expense of age, class and other
existing social cleavages (Vanhuysse, 2009).
In Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic, similar ethnic
cleavage strategies were used to different degrees to target the smaller
Roma minority populations (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012). But especially
in the Visegrad countries and Slovenia, age became a politically more
important cleavage line.2 For instance, Hungarian and Polish elites have
similarly reshaped the distributions of economic winners and losers in
transition, but along lines of risk and age, rather than ethnicity. In so
doing, they have proactively modified the subsequent patterns of distribu-
tive conflict in the polity, for instance by reducing the political salience
of class cleavages and significantly increasing the electoral size and polit-
ical clout of the pensioner constituency (Vanhuysse, 2009). The political
consequences of the social costs of reforms, notably of large-scale job
loss, can be far-reaching (Golden, 1997; Przeworski, 1991; Vanhuysse,
2008). Early in the socially costly ECE transitions to market democracy,
a key political aim was therefore to try and temper these consequences
one way or another. Some postcommunist governments have proac-
tively reduced the threat of large-scale reform protests by splitting up
formerly homogenous groups of at-risk workers into new heterogeneous
and now-competing work-welfare status categories (Vanhuysse, 2019).
To this effect, they used public pension systems as buffers against large-
scale transitional unemployment. Post-1989, Hungary and Poland, but
also Slovakia and Slovenia though not the Czech Republic, have witnessed
‘great abnormal pensioner booms’ as a result of historically unprece-
dented exit of working-age citizens into early and disability pensions
2 On age politics generally, see Pampel and Williamson (1989), Lynch (2006), Tepe
and Vanhuysse (2009, 2012), Vanhuysse and Goerres (2012).
(Vanhuysse, 2006). In the first seven years of postcommunist transition

alone, hundreds of thousands of working-age Hungarians and Poles were
incentivized to exit into early and disability pensions by means of more
generous and better protected pension eligibility conditions and benefit
generosity relative to ‘younger’ programmes such as unemployment and
education. These policies led to large-scale increases in the number
of pensioners, with significant macro-fiscal and political-electoral conse-
quences. Whereas the number of 60-plussers remained stable in Hungary
and grew by 10% in Poland between 1989 and 1996, the number of
old-age pensioners increased by respectively one-fifth and 46%. In the
same period of just seven years, the number of disability pensioners also
increased by one-half in Hungary and by one-fifth in Poland (Vanhuysse,
2004). In the first six years of transition alone, and at a time of still modest
population ageing, the estimated share of pensioners within the electorate
increased from 32 to 40% in Hungary and from 27 to 34% in Poland
(Vanhuysse, 2006: 120). By contrast, the Czechoslovak, and later Czech,
approach was to altogether prevent unemployment as much as possible,
by continuing to subsidize firms and larger active labour market spending.
But in Slovakia, 80% of new pensioners retired early by 1994, compared
to just 3% back in 1990 (Svorenova & Petrasova, 2005: 127). Slovenia,
in turn, was one of just three 28 European countries (with Croatia and
Luxemburg) to record sustained electoral success for narrow pensioners’
parties (in the sense of polling four percent of the national vote in two or
more parliamentary elections; Hanley, 2012).
This politically ‘pushed’, rather than demographically ‘pulled’, boom
in pensioner numbers set in motion a powerful new political logic of
“pensioners’ welfare states” (Tepe & Vanhuysse, 2009, 2012). Simply
put, the suddenly much enlarged electoral constituencies now composed
of ‘regular’ (post-retirement age) pensioners and large groups of new
‘abnormal’ (early and disability) pensioners made it concomitantly harder
to retrench pro-elderly policies (except through grandfathering clauses
affecting only younger cohorts) or to tackle special pension regimes for
farmers, police, military and manifold other especially privileged occupa-
tional groups (Vanhuysse, 2006). The electoral power of elderly voters
relative to younger voters in ECE can be estimated with the measure of
‘relative elderly power’ proposed by Vanhuysse and Goerres (this volume).
This variable multiplies the electoral turnout ratio of elderly people (those
aged 60plus) relative to younger people (those aged 18–29) by the ratio
of these two age groups’ numerical sizes. East Central European coun-
tries recorded very high values on this relative elderly power measure
by international comparison around 2015. In fact, six ECE countries—
Hungary (with a value of 2.53), the Czech Republic (2.92), Estonia
(3.04), Slovenia (3.33), Croatia (3.38) and Latvia (4.11)—ranked among
the top-twenty highest values within the entire 109-country sample in our
Global Political Demography database.3
These electoral power balances of the elderly and pensioners were
reflected in policy outcomes. The relative generosity and inflation-
protection of pension policies in turn led to an immediate reversal of the
high pre-1989 poverty trends for pensioners, relative to other age groups
and to other transition risk groups. For instance, in Hungary and Poland
by 2002 the relative incomes of pensioners were not just higher than
they had been in 1991, they were also significantly higher than those of
unemployed people and of workers with few economic resources in every
single year after 1991 (Verhoeven et al., 2009: 113–4). More comprehen-
sively, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, unlike the Baltic states,
now started evolving along new pathways towards prematurely high levels
of pro-elderly welfare state bias as a result of pensioners’ boosted elec-
toral power.4 Already by around 2007–2008, in addition to three ‘usual
South European suspects’ (Greece, Italy, and Portugal), much younger
societies such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and,
most notably, Poland recorded among the most heavily pro-elderly biased
welfare states in the OECD world (Vanhuysse, 2014).
Pairwise comparisons on Vanhuysse’s (2013: 27) synthetic elderly bias
in overall social spending (EBiSS) ratio, which aggregates a wide range
of elderly and nonelderly oriented social programmes and controls for
demographic structure, are illuminating. For instance, around the time
of the global economic crisis (2007–2008), the welfare state in then still
‘middle-aged’ Hungary, with an old-age support ratio of 3.9 non-elderly
persons to every 65plusser, spent around 4.8 times more on every elderly
as on every non-elderly citizen. But in slightly older Estonia (with a lower
3 Values in this global sample ranged from a minimum of 0.25 (Sao Tome) to a
maximum of 5.89 (Japan) (Goerres et al., 2020).
4 See Vanhuysse (2014). On intergenerational resource transfers and measures of pro-
elderly policy bias, see also Lynch (2006), Gamliel-Yehoshua and Vanhuysse (2010), Tepe
and Vanhuysse (2010), Gal et al. (2018), Vanhuysse and Tremmel (2019), Vanhuysse and
Gal (2021).
old-age support ratio of 3.6), the welfare state spent only 2.9 times more.
Similarly, the demographically young Slovak society spent 6.6 times as
much on every elderly Slovak as on every nonelderly Slovak. Yet in the
comparably young Irish society, the state spent only 2.7 times as much.
And Poland already occupied pole position within the entire OECD on
the EBiSS by the time of the global economic crisis. In this (then) still
demographically younger society (old-age support ratio 4.8), the state
spent 8.6 times as much on every elderly Pole as on every non-elderly
Pole. Yet in the equally young New Zealand, the state spent only 2.7
times as much (Vanhuysse, 2014). A recalculation of the same EBiSS
indicator for 2010–2011 reconfirms Poland as the single most pro-elderly
biased welfare state within the OECD, with Slovakia, the Czech Republic,
Slovenia and Hungary in, respectively, 5th, 7th, 9th and 12th-highest
rank (Vanhuysse & Tremmel, 2019).
In sum, as foretold in Vanhuysse (2006), these were cases where
political push before demographic pull set political pathways in motion
towards premature “gerontocracies” or “pensioners’ welfare states”. All
five ECE countries had smaller welfare states than the ‘Western’ EU-
15 average throughout the 1990s and 2000s (measured by total social
spending as a share of GDP). But Slovenia, Poland (from 1994) and
Hungary (from 2005) spent more on old age and survivors cash
programmes than the EU-15 average despite being younger societies.5
This evidence, like that of the high EBiSS and relative ‘elderly power’
values, strongly indicates but does not conclusively demonstrate unsus-
tainability and inequity in how different generations are treated by the
welfare state in the Visegrad Four and Slovenia. This risk of unsustainable
welfare state models is aggravated by the fact that after EU accession,
Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Baltic states have also witnessed
‘young brain drain’—massive emigration waves of young people voting
with their feet to seek better economic opportunities and better public
goods (like infrastructure and education) and higher levels of democratic
governance in Western and Northern Europe. In the first two decades of
the twenty-first century alone, Latvia and Romania lost, respectively, 12
and 9% of their population to net emigration (European Demographic
Datasheet, 2020). Subsequently, sustained economic growth in the 2000s
lowered the salience of fiscal and sustainability worries in Poland, as has
5 Own calculations from OECD Social Expenditure Database; see also Kuitto (2016:
116).
a more recent refocusing on education investment and PISA tests perfor-

mance (Vanhuysse, 2015b). In addition, whereas the Czech Republic
also witnessed low levels of emigration for most of the postcommunist
period, other Central European countries, notably Poland (though not
the Baltics), have started receiving rising immigration flows in the past
decade (Sobotka & Fürnkranz-Prskawetz, 2020).
3 Pension Policies: The Belated Closing

of Early Labour Market Exit Windows
While the postcommunist countries in ECE have generally tended to
develop smaller welfare states than their much richer West European
neighbours, these were already larger welfare states than in comparably
rich countries in Latin America and Asia (Haggard & Kaufman, 2008,
2009). Total social spending in 2015 stood at 19% of GDP in both
Hungary and Poland, but only 14 and 15% in Romania and Latvia;
significantly below the EU average of 27% (Eurostat database, 2019).
In addition, the prematurely large ECE welfare states have also become
prematurely elderly-oriented, as described in Sect. 2 above. Massive early
exit in the 1990s has set powerful pro-elderly political-electoral logics
and path-dependent reform constraints in place. In classic policy feed-
back fashion, effect became cause.6 Once enlarged by political push, the
electorate of pensioners subsequently became a stronger political force,
constraining and biasing the ways in which governments could conduct
social policy down the line (Vanhuysse, 2006).
As a result, Visegrad countries were prematurely overspending on
pensions as they entered the twenty-first century. By 2010, old-age
pension spending alone was 7.4% of GDP in Romania, 6.8% in Hungary,
6.9% in Poland and 8.7% in Latvia, compared to a 9.2% EU average
(Eurostat database, 2021). As a result of double fiscal-electoral strait-
jackets and looming fiscal instabilities, pension reforms have been imple-
mented in different years in all four ECE cases, typically affecting
non-pensioners more strongly (Müller, 1999). As effective retirement
ages were very low by international standards wide across ECE except in
the Baltic states, these reforms typically included increases in the pension
6 On path dependence and feedback processes in pension politics, see, e.g., Pierson
(1993, 2004), Myles and Pierson (2001), Vanhuysse (2001), and Tepe and Vanhuysse
(2012).
eligibility age. As a result, once the great abnormal pensioner booms of

the early 1990s had run their course, effective retirement ages have gone
up steadily and markedly over the next two decades. This happened wide
across the region, including in the Czech Republic and the Baltic states
(which did not witness such booms), with the sole exception of Slovenia
(Gal & Rado, 2019).
In Poland, at a time of not (yet) significant population ageing, pension
spending more than doubled between 1990 and 2014, from about 5%
to 11% of GDP. Poland did not change the retirement age even during
an otherwise significant systemic (three-pillar) pension reform in 1999
(Chłoń-Domińczak et al., 1999). For all insured persons born after 1948,
a new defined-contribution pay-as-you-go system with notional accounts
(and obligatory saving in private open funds) was introduced. But in line
with Vanhuysse’s (2006) pro-elderly pathways theory, electorally powerful
groups such as farmers/peasants and politically mobilized groups such
as prosecutors, the uniformed services and miners were exempt, and
they remain so today (Gora, 2013). In 2011–2012, a liberal govern-
ment increased the official pension age to 67, by 2020 for men and 2040
for women (Clemens & Parvani, 2017). But two-thirds of contributions
to the second (fully funded) pension pillar were redirected to the first
pay-as-you-go pillar in 2011 (Drahokoupil & Domonkos, 2012). And
again in line with the pro-elderly pathways theory, even the increase of
the retirement age in 2011/2012 was reversed after the presidential elec-
tions in 2015, when the newly elected President, with the support of the
right-wing populist Law and Justice party-led government, decreased the
eligible retirement age to be again 60 for women and to 65 for men
(Kamola-Cieślik, 2017). This decision reduced the financial stability of
the pension fund and it will lead to lower pension benefits and more taxes
for future working generations (Russel, 2016). It made Poland unique in
Europe in actually lowering pension eligibility age at a time of faster popu-
lation ageing (Goettig, 2017). The 2016 measures also announced the
complete elimination of ‘open’ (private) pension funds (Or˛eziak, 2014).
Future older generations (especially women) will not be able to count on
similarly generous public pensions as current ones (Chloń-Domińczak &
Strzelecki, 2013). Retired women and those employed on so-called junk
contracts (from which social security contributions were not deducted)
are expected to have a particularly severe risk of old-age poverty in future
(Żuk & Żuk, 2018).
In Hungary, pension spending remained subject to electoral busi-

ness cycles throughout the late 1990s and 2000s. A systemic three-pillar
pension reform was implemented in 1998,7 though older workers could
still choose between the new mixed public–private system or remaining
with the public pension (on reformed rules) (Müller, 1999). More limited
changes were enacted in 2006–2007, to restrict the ability to combine
working and claiming an early retirement pension and to reduce pension
benefits for people taking early retirement (Ageing Report, 2009). In
2009, the statutory retirement age was legislated to increase from 62 to
65 between 2014 and 2022 (Ageing Report, 2018). Additionally, from
2011, a special allowance was introduced to give women the opportu-
nity to retire without actuarial benefit reduction after 40 eligibility years
(including years in employment or pregnancy benefit and others related
to raising children)—the Female 40 law. In 2011, the two-thirds majority
FIDESZ government went as far as de facto renationalizing a previously
privatized pensions pillar worth around 10% of GDP (Drahokoupil &
Domonkos, 2012; Kemmerling, 2013).
In Latvia, the standard age requirement for women (59.5 years in
2003) increased by 6 months each year to reach 62 already by 2008 (for
men it reached 62 in 2003). In 2012, a further pension reform gradu-
ally increased retirement age by 3 months a year, until reaching 65 years
and the minimum contributory to 20 years in 2025. Latvian pension
legislation provides an opportunity to retire 2 years before the normal
retirement age (if the insurance record is 30 years or more), but only at
50% of the full pension amount. In Romania, a three-pillar pension system
was introduced only in 2007. The retirement age for men is supposed to
increase from 64 to 65, while for women it will increase to 63 by 2030
but with only 15 years of contribution required (Ageing Report, 2015).
Penalties for early retirement have been increased, while eligibility for
disability pensions has been tightened. But here for active military police
corps and special public servants within national defence, public order and
national security, the standard retirement age will increase gradually only
up to 60 in 2030. Early retirement pension can be granted up to 5 years
before the insured person reaches the standard retirement age.
7 Based on OECD (2008: 88–89).

4 Pro-Family Policy as a Belated

Remedy for Lower Fertility?
Family spending encompassed 1.3, 1.5 and 1.6% of GDP in Romania,
Poland and Latvia in 2015—but 2.3% in Hungary, similar to the EU
average (2.4%) (Eurostat database, 2019). In terms of spending effort,
these ECE countries (Hungary excepted) are comparable to classic
Southern European familializing countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal
and Greece. After 1990, ECE countries have tended to erode some of
the de-familialisation elements of communist family policy regimes and
have moved back towards re-familialisation with gendered policies incen-
tivising women to leave the labour market to raise children (Saxonberg
& Sirovatka, 2006: 186). Obligations of extended families have become
stronger and state responsibilities weaker, in part as a result of widespread
societal dissatisfaction with state intervention in family life (Appleton
& Byrne, 2003: 211). The post-2000 social investment paradigm has
seen significant extra spending in public childcare infrastructure and early
education in Western and Northern Europe (Léon, 2016; Vanhuysse,
2015b). Not so in ECE countries. Poland and Latvia even saw a decline in
spending on early, primary and secondary school spending between 2000
and 2010 (from 4.4 to 4% and 6.1 to 4.2% of GDP), whereas Hungary
and Romania saw stable spending trends (at 3.9 and 2.5%) (Eurostat
database, 2019, OECD stats).
However, more recently there have been indications of significant shifts
in this field, too. From 2010 onward, in Poland and Romania early educa-
tion and family spending acquired higher political salience as a result
of low fertility rates (Sobociński, 2016). Poland has been the European
country with the lowest family spending since the 1990s (around 1% of
GDP). But this indicator has been rising since 2010 to reach 2.6% of
GDP by 2017 (Eurostat database, 2020). Polish local authorities invested
in providing better access to childcare services and pre-school education,
supported by the national government in a concerted effort to activate
more women via better work-family reconciliation conditions. At the
same time, maternity and childcare leaves were extended to up to one
full year, made accessible to a larger group of beneficiaries and made
more financially generous. More generous tax reliefs for families with
children and additional support for large families were also introduced
(Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2013). Making good on electoral promises,
the Rodzina 500+ (Family 500+) programme was implemented by the
new right-wing-conservative Law and Justice party government after its

2015 election victory. It offered financial support to all families raising
two or more children, and low-income families with one child; this was
later extended to all families regardless of income even with one child
(Perek-Białas et al., 2017).
In Romania, the family support system was traditionally built around
cash benefits, notably child allowances. After 1990, the value of child
allowances severely declined in real terms (Popescu, 2014; Stănescu,
2014). But in 2008, child allowances were set at 85% of the previous
wage, and the parental leave extended to up to 2 years. In 2010, austerity
policies imposed cuts in parental leave benefits. The value of all cash and
benefits for working parents amount to around 1% of GDP (Stanescu,
2014). Even in 2017, Romania is the second-lowest spender on family
social protection within the EU (1.1% of GDP) (Eurostat database,
2020). Within ECE, Hungary was always an outlier in family policy
(Inglot et al., 2012), and even more so after the explicitly conservative-
Catholic and nationalist-populist FIDESZ party regained and kept on
to power in 2010. FIDESZ governments have increased spending on
family allowances, new tax reliefs and additional housing grants, as well
as subsidized or heavily co-financed services such as daycare centres, child
catering, school book supplies for families with financial difficulties and
the promotion of work-family life balance.8 As a result, Hungary’s public
spending on family has been above the OECD average of about 3.5% of
GDP in 2010–2013, compared to less than 2% in Poland, Romania and
Latvia.
5 A Belated Active Ageing Policy Paradigm?

Long-term care policy, another domain strongly affected by demographic
changes, has not traditionally been a policy priority in ECE, the occasional
strategic policy document notwithstanding (Lipszyc et al., 2012; Spasova
et al., 2018). To this day, this policy domain is generally characterised
by low availability of care services, lack of coordination between health
and social care services and a strong reliance on informal care (Perek-
Białas & Racław, 2014; Popa, 2010). Care for the elderly today is still
predominantly family provided as public services are either insufficient (in
8 Peer Review (2015), based on Conditional cash transfers and their impact on children
Hungary (2015).
terms of quality or accessibility), or there is moral stigma associated with

their use (Popa, 2010). But as population ageing gathers pace in the next
decades (Fig. 1), this lack of political salience is likely to change. The same
distinct lack of political salience used to also characterize active ageing
policies in ECE (Perek-Białas et al., 2006; Ruzik-Sierdzinska et al., 2013).
However, in this domain recent years have seen significant policy shifts,
spurred in no small part by EU accession and the European Year of Active
Ageing and Intergenerational Solidarity in 2012 (Ruzik-Sierdzinska et al.,
2013).
The ECE region’s general lag in preparedness for active ageing is
clearly evident in Zaidi et al.’s (2013) four-domain, 22-dimensional Active
Aging Index (AAI) developed for the EU’s ‘Year of Active Aging and
Solidarity between the Generations’. Poland occupied the bottom posi-
tion in the 27-country sample on the overall AAI, with Hungary ranking
third lowest, Latvia ranks sixth lowest and Romania eighth lowest. In
addition, Hungary occupied the bottom position on the AAI’s four-
dimensional ‘elderly workers’ employment’ domain index, with Poland
ranking fourth lowest but Romania and Latvia ranking eighth and twelfth
highest. Poland, Romania and Latvia also occupied the lowest, fourth
and sixth lowest position on the AAI’s ‘participation in society’ domain.
Latvia ranked lowest on the ‘independent, healthy and secure living’
domain. And Romania, Latvia and Hungary occupied the three bottom
positions on the AAI’s six-dimensional ‘capacity and enabling environ-
ment for active aging’ domain, with Poland ranking 6th lowest (Zaidi
et al., 2013; see also Vanhuysse, 2014). These AAI findings are congruent
with a different measure specifically on children—UNICEF’s (2013) five-
domain, 26-dimensional indicator of child well-being for 29 countries.
Romania and Latvia occupied the two bottom positions with Hungary
and Poland occupying ninth and tenth lowest rank.
In reaction to this, in Romania the concept of active ageing was
promoted by the government through a range of events organized
in collaboration with National Council of Elderly Persons, NGOs and
local authorities. Strategic documents9 show a strong central govern-

ment commitment to the active ageing agenda. In Poland, parliament
voted in December 2013 for a new set of ageing policies, covered
under rubrics such as ‘Assumptions of Long-Term Senior Policy’, the
‘Social Activity of Older Persons Programme’, and a revised 50+ Soli-
darity Programme (Szatur-Jaworska, 2015). The spending on these active
ageing programmes had been about 15 million euro in 2012–2013, but
the budget was determined by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy at
up to 70 million euro for 2014–2020. New policies were also announced
in Hungary in 2009 (a National Old-age Policy), in Latvia in 2014
(‘Latvia: Developing a Comprehensive Active Ageing Strategy for Longer
and Better Working Lives’) and in Romania in 2015 (‘National Strategy
for Promoting Active Ageing and the Protection of the Elderly for the
period 2015–2020’).
The ways in which the ‘European Year of Active Aging and Solidarity
between the Generations’ served as a catalyst for various government
initiatives in active ageing policy for senior citizens at the national,
regional and local levels is illustrated by the case of Poland. In reaction
to its lowest score in the first AAI (Zaidi et al., 2013), the Ministry of
Labour and Social Policy, led by the leader of the Peasant Party whose
constituency was mainly rural and older voters, moved to promote active
ageing concepts in various ways. First, a new Department of Seniors
Policy was established within this Ministry and in this way for the first
time ‘older people’ were recognized in this national institutional context
not linked to social assistance or pension systems. A special funding mech-
anism was implemented to support active ageing projects via open calls.
At the Ministerial level, the Council of Senior Policy consisting of experts,
seniors’ organizations, stakeholders and representatives of public institu-
tions at various levels of governance for seniors was created opening for
dialogue and consultations about the structure of senior policy in Poland
(Szatur-Jaworska, 2015).
9 ‘National Strategy for Promoting Active Ageing and the Protection of the Elderly
for the period 2015–2020’ and the corresponding ‘Strategic Action Plan for 2015–2020’
(Government Decree no. 566/15 July 2015). Adoption of an active ageing strategy was
one of the preconditions for accessing funding in the 2014–2020 programming period
(a condition fulfilled by Romania in 2015–2016). At the heart of the Strategy lies the
background study ‘Living Long, Staying Active and Strong: Promotion of Active Ageing
in Romania’.
6 Conclusions: The Pervasive

Political Failure to Prepare
for the Demographic Elephant-on-the-Move
This chapter has discussed the political and policy processes surrounding
the significant, in some respects even dramatic, population changes
in ECE from initially comparatively younger societies around 1989–
1990 to unusually fast-ageing societies since around 2010–2015. It is
worth repeating how much ECE countries were truly demographically
younger at the time of the fall of the Iron Curtain than their ‘West-
ern’ EU members. Yet, subsequently, these societies have largely spurned
their roughly twenty-to-twenty-five-year-long subsequent demographic
window of opportunity for policy reform. This has prepared ECE democ-
racies, notably Romania, Bulgaria and the Visegrad Four and Slovenia,
badly for the coming three decades, as ECE has now entered a period of
accelerated future demographic ageing.
Most of this was thoroughly predictable—indeed, predicted. While
the size and pace of the early postcommunist drops in fertility and the
post-EU-accession westbound emigration flows were arguably partially
unexpected, the larger fifty-year demographic picture summarized in
Fig. 1 was anything but a black swan. Rather, accelerating population
ageing resembled elephants on the move: enormous, momentous, but
slow in getting started. And yet, with the partial exception of pension
policy, ECE countries have, on the whole, comprehensively failed to suffi-
ciently adapt and reform their policy models to better prepare for the
faster population ageing ahead. Likely reasons are multiple. They include
policy overload and low levels of administrative human capital and state
capacity after 1989–1990 (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012; O’Dwyer, 2004),
patronage politics and other semi-corrupt political practices (Mares &
Young, 2019; O’Dwyer, 2004) and, subsequently, significant democratic
backsliding, especially but not solely in Hungary and Poland (Journal of
Democracy, 2007; Vanhuysse, 2008), and/or much reduced elite account-
ability because of weak interest representation (Rozbicka et al., 2021;
Vanhuysse, 2007), (younger) citizen exit, and democratic hollowing—
reduced political voice (Greskovits, 2015; Vanhuysse, 2019).
This political failure to prepare for demographic change is reflected in
synthetic policy or outcome indicators. Well into the twenty-first century,
ECE countries mainly occupied the bottom ranks on the European
Commission’s Active Aging Index and UNICEF’s child well-being index.
Notwithstanding the new post-2000 social investment paradigm, they

were also among the lowest spenders within the OECD on early child-
hood education and early human capital investment (Vanhuysse 2015a,
2015b). With notable exceptions such as Poland (which has made major
strides in PISA scores since 2010) and the Czech Republic (which has
consistently performed well in mathematics), ECE democracies have on
the whole not sufficiently boosted the future human capital basis of their
now fast-ageing welfare states. Even in the most recent PISA waves, the
‘Eastern’ EU scored lower on average than the ‘Western’ EU on math-
ematics and problem solving, with Romania, Hungary and even more
so Bulgaria as particularly bad performers (Vanhuysse, 2015b). All four
Visegrad countries plus neocorporatist Slovenia, though not the more
neoliberal Baltic states, recorded prematurely high elderly bias in social
spending (EBiSS; Vanhuysse, 2013, 2014). As we have noted, the former
five countries have evolved into pensioners’ welfare states or gerontocra-
cies, far along the path to premature pro-elderly bias. Their high-EBiSS
values are all the more remarkable precisely because the Visegrad Four and
Slovenia were, until at least around 2010, demographically much younger
societies than other high-EBiSS countries such as Italy, Greece and Japan.
Given that the Visegrad Four (though not Slovenia) also benefited
from a slower pace of population ageing (OADR growth) than the
rest of ECE until at least 2010, and that Slovenia in turn barely
managed to raise effective retirement ages, these five countries can be said
to have most comprehensively squandered their demographic window
for policy reform. Sustainable and balanced intergenerational resource
transfer constellations are the cement of society over time, the glue that
allows societies to reproduce (Vanhuysse & Gal, 2021). Premature imbal-
ances of the kind shown in high-EBiSS values are therefore an ominous
telltale, indicating a potential risk of future societal fragility. Alarm bells
should ring all the louder given related trends such as the relative lack
of early human capital investment and the large-scale ‘young brain drain’
from Hungary, Poland and Slovakia (but also Romania and the Baltics)
since EU accession.
We have given the great abnormal pensioner booms in Hungary and
Poland as a case of policies that, if anything, further decreased the
degree of societal preparedness for fast population ageing (Vanhuysse,
2006). Here, early retirement massively increased the electoral weight
of pensioners and the fiscal burden of pension systems, while directly
contributing to prematurely high levels of pro-elderly bias in social poli-

cies (political push before demographic pull). In Latvia and Estonia, the
new postcommunist elites primarily accentuated ethnic cleavages instead
of age cleavages as part of a nation-building strategy to create new
groups of welfare state winners and losers and target Russian-speaking
minorities (Laitin, 1998; Vanhuysse, 2009). These exclusionary ethnic
strategies were mimicked, albeit more for conservative-populist reasons,
in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic to target Roma
minorities (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012).
Another indication of how ECE democracies appear to have largely
missed the opportunity for policy reform can be seen when juxtaposing
the standard (chronological or backward-looking) OADR given in Table
1 with alternative forward-looking old-age dependency ratios that aggre-
gate residual or prospective (remaining) life expectancies (Sanderson and
Scherbov, 2019). In most advanced societies, in terms of physical and
cognitive fitness or dependency a chronological age of, say, 70 today
simply does not mean the same thing as it did three or four decades ago.
In a real sense, “seventy is the new sixty”: on average, a seventy-year-old
Swede or German today is actually younger (with more life years left to
live) than a seventy-year-old Swede or German was back in 1980.
It is useful to compare these alternative prospective old-age depen-
dency ratios (the number of people in age groups with life expectancies
of 15 or fewer years, divided by the number of people at least 20 years
old in age groups with life expectancies greater than 15 years) with
standard (chronological) OADRs. Such comparison shows markedly less
dramatic trends in terms of ‘prospective population aging’ for the rich
societies. Even notoriously old Japan suddenly appears less gerontocratic
(Sanderson & Scherbov, 2010). This means that most rich democracies
seem simultaneously to be ageing fast (chronologically) and to be ageing
slowly or even to be rejuvenating (prospectively). As this reflects better
health policies, health technologies, healthier behaviour and lifestyles
and similar cultural changes, this can be interpreted as a measure of
how cultures and policy models adapt to prepare their populations for
(chronological) ageing.
However, there is one notable exception to this general observation.
The ECE democracies are among the few cases not to post markedly
lower levels of prospective OADR as compared to the standard OADR.
This is likely to reflect a host of variables negatively affecting remaining
life expectancy, among them still unhealthy (especially male) lifestyles and
insufficient health spending.10 In 2015, OADR values for the ‘Western’

EU-15 members were on average 31.2 but prospective OADR values
were almost half as low (17.4). This was not the case for the ‘Eastern’
EU-11, however. Here, OADR values were 28.7 but prospective OADR
values only somewhat lower at 22.1.11 In other words, as mentioned at
the start of this chapter, ‘Eastern’ Europe will have caught up with ‘West-
ern’ Europe in terms of standard (chronological) ageing by mid-century.
But crucially, Eastern Europe is prospectively older than Western Europe
already today. By this yardstick, ECE’s quarter-century-long demographic
window has already closed. Going forward, this divergence is set to
continue further. By mid-century, the prospective OADR is projected to
increase to 24.1 for the EU-15 by 2050. But it will have reached 30.9 for
the ‘Eastern’ EU-11.12
All in all, as foretold in Vanhuysse (2006), this seems to add up to a
particularly bleak’ generational politics’ picture for ECE in the decades
to come. Modifying this picture somewhat, we have shown that since
around 2010–2015, the political salience of age group relevant policies
(such as family and work-family reconciliation policies and active ageing
policy) appears to be on the increase. This, too, has been the result
of multiple factors, including the proactive use of social policies by the
same strongly Christian-conservative and/or nationalist-populist parties
that have in some cases (notably Hungary and Poland) caused fast demo-
cratic backsliding—an illiberal ECE variant of welfare chauvinism. But by
then, as Vanhuysse and Goerres’s yardstick of relative elderly power shows
(this volume), the electoral influence of elderly voters relative to younger
10 See Sanderson and Scherbov (2010: 1287; 2019). With the single exception of
Slovenia, ECE democracies have been spending significantly lower proportions of their
GDP on health care than Western European ones over the past quarter century (Kuitto,
2016: 118). As effective retirement ages have generally gone up since the mid-1990s,
remaining life expectancy at retirement has actually stayed stable or even declined in
ECE, again with the exception of Slovenia and, somewhat, Latvia (Gal & Rado, 2019).
11 Own calculations from European Demographic Datasheet (2016); for demographic
detail see Sobotka and Fürnkranz-Prskawetz (2020). Applied to our four cases, in Hungary
the standard OADR for 2015 was 28.7, whereas the prospective OADR was only a little
lower, at 23.5. In Poland, the 2015 OADR was 24, whereas the prospective OADR
was significantly lower, at 16.1. In Romania the OADR for 2015 was 27.4, whereas
the prospective OADR was only a little lower, at 23.2. In Latvia the OADR for 2015
was 31.7, whereas the prospective OADR was only a little lower, at 27 (European
Demographic Datasheet, 2016).
12 Own calculations from European Demographic Datasheet (2016).
voters in ECE was among the highest in the world, with predictable policy
consequences. In sum, the political demography of postcommunist East
Central Europe from 1990 into the near future is one of long-spurned
policy opportunities to prepare for fast population ageing, belatedly and
only very partially realised.
Acknowledgements We thank Stefan Domonkos, Robert Ivan Gal and Achim

Goerres for their helpful comments.
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Vanhuysse, P., & Tremmel, J. (2019). Measuring intergenerational justice for
public policy. In A. Poama & A. Lever (Eds.), Routledge handbook in ethics
and public policy (pp. 472–486). Routledge.
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holder.
CHAPTER 16
Combating Low Life Expectancy and Low

Fertility in Tumultuous Political Times:
A Comparison of the Ukraine, Russia
and Belarus
Rza Kazimov and Sergei V. Zakharov
1 Introduction
Demographic trends in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine have diverged in
several notorious ways from other European countries, even from those
in postcommunist East Central Europe (Vanhuysse & Perek-Bialas, this
volume).1 These include fertility differentials across regions and ethnic
groups, a substantial gender gap in the mortality rate, widely varying life
1 This chapter uses results from a project supported by the Basic Research Program
at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow). For further data, see also Goerres et al.
(2020).
R. Kazimov (B)
Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: kazimovr@hu-berlin.de
S. V. Zakharov
Institute of Demography (HSE IDEM), National Research University, Moscow,
Russia

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_16
402 R. KAZIMOV AND S. V. ZAKHAROV
expectancy, and increasing emigration fuelled by economic recessions,

regional conflicts and repressive laws. In this chapter, we combine two
disciplinary perspectives—demography and political science—to establish
bi-directional causal links between population changes and politics in
Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Analysing the three demographic trends of
fertility, ageing and mortality, and migration, the chapter aims to show
that the population dynamics of each country have considerable political
implications on both domestic and regional levels.
To that end, this chapter refers to both directions of their causal links.
Applying the basic reasoning, however, that a politics cannot exist without
a population, the chapter places considerable focus on the first direction
(demography to politics), which is also an understudied causal link that
this chapter aims help remedy. In the following, we introduce some of
these trends and their political implications, to show the increased political
entanglement between the countries since 1990. With this background,
the rest of this chapter discusses the impacts of population change on
the demands placed on governments and on the distribution of polit-
ical power within states. Following this, in the conclusion, we discuss
the disciplinary concepts—namely demography and politics—that link
demographic variables to the political structure of a society. Given this
discussion, we conclude that, due to the failed economic development
and an absence of deliberative policymaking leading to poor governance,
the current demographic trends can destabilize these countries.
2 Demographic Trends
and Political Entanglement
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, structural changes in Belarus,
Russia and Ukraine destabilized their demographic processes. The post-
Soviet transformation reflected and magnified the demographic trends,
as each economy transitioned from oversized, state-driven industry and
agriculture to a privatized, market-driven economy. For instance, this
region—Belarus, Russia and Ukraine—entered historically low fertility
rates (Frejka & Zakharov, 2012; Perelli-Harris, 2008) while mortality
remained high throughout the 1990s. At the same time, the lift of a fully
regularized migration policy as an after-effect of the Soviet demise led to
unprecedented levels of internal and external population movement.
On a country level, the demographic trends can be linked to specific
political factors. For instance, in Belarus, families with higher-order births
in rural and economically deprived areas long formed a homogeneous
16 COMBATING LOW LIFE EXPECTANCY AND LOW FERTILITY … 403
group supporting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, which has

dissipated over time alongside a declining population, potentially under-
mining the regime’s authoritarian rule. Fertility differentials across regions
and ethnic groups also determine Russia’s particular fertility decline and
so later labour shortages that policymakers must address, and Ukraine
experiences similar challenges that are further exacerbated by a period of
political instability between 2004 and 2014 following the Orange Revo-
lution and EuroMaidan. Meanwhile, between 1998 and the mid-2000s,
life expectancy in these countries either decreased (Russia) or stagnated
(Belarus, Ukraine), followed by a rebound between the mid-2000s and
2018. Thus, we can tie fertility to ageing and mortality up to the present
through stages. In a first stage, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine experienced
an initial decline in infant and childhood mortality followed by declines in
fertility rates. The second stage remains mostly in the future, but—as in
Europe—we may see a rapid decline in mortality at older ages (Gavrilova
& Gavrilov, 2009), with dire economic and so political implications.
In contrast to the above declines, emigration in all three countries
increased sharply, remaining high during the last two decades. In Ukraine,
this culminated in a crisis that caused a massive population reshuffling in
Eastern Europe. With 1.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), the
war in Ukraine’s east and high emigration rates delay the current democ-
ratization process, putting Ukraine’s chances for economic prosperity into
question. These examples and background show that country-level demo-
graphic trends are linked to their particular political landscapes, which are
in turn linked to regional-level demographic trends resulting in political
entanglement in the region. The rest of this chapter analyses these links
in detail, which will end in a discussion of the underlying concepts that
show these links to be bi-directional—all of which is the basis for our
conclusion as a first step towards more research.
3 Declining Fertility Rate

and Government Responses
The total fertility rate (TFR) in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine followed a
downward path from the late 1980s until the turn of the century (Frejka
& Zakharov, 2012; Philipov, 2003). While achieving temporary growth in
the 2000s, the TFR has remained below the pre-transition periods. More
importantly, it is also below the stable replacement rate level approxi-
mately defined as 2.1 live births per woman. In 2017, the total fertility
rate in Russia was 1.62 births per woman (Federal State Statistics Services,
2017). In Belarus and Ukraine, this rate was even lower—1.54 in Belarus2
and 1.37 in Ukraine3 (Timonina, 2017). Belarus, Russia and Ukraine
mainly pursue a pro-natalist public policy model in which the primary
objective is to raise fertility and the principal instruments to achieve this
goal are financial. These include large birth allowances, in combination
with other increased benefits and well-compensated parental leaves. The
following elaborates on population policies in the recent years in each of
the three countries.
3.1 Belarus
Low fertility occupies a major political and public discourse in Belarus.
The ‘National Programme of People’s Health and Demographic Security
of the Republic of Belarus 2016 – 2020’ is the most recent legislative
attempt to stabilize population and increase the total fertility rate from
1.73 to 2.1.4 Policy measures aimed at boosting fertility include a lump
sum payment for each birth. As of 2018, the payment is equivalent to
$1,006 for the first and $1,412 for higher-order births, or 10 and 14
times the subsistence level budget, respectively. Under the universal child-
care benefits, families receive 35% of the average wage for the first child
and 40% for subsequent children.5
The key task of the family policy in Belarus is to promote the image
of a larger family. In fact, higher-order births were traditionally more
widespread in this country compared to Russia and Ukraine, receiving
larger financial incentives from the government (Frejka et al., 2016;
Zakharov, 2008). In 2015, the government introduced a family capital
programme, offering a one-time allowance of $10,000 to families that
2 Demografiqeski eegodnik Respubliki Belarus, 2011–2018 [Demographic

Yearbook of the Republic of Belarus, 2011–2018]. Nacionalny statistiqeski
komitet Respubliki Belarus (Belstat).
3 Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Lugansk regions are not included.
4 Gosudarstvenna programma ”Zdorove naroda i demografiqeska
bezopasnost Respubliki Belarus“ na 2016–2020 gody [“Public Health
and Demographic Security of the Republic of Belarus” for 2016–2020]. Postanovlenie
Soveta Ministrov Respubliki Belarus 14 March 2016 No 200.
5 O gosudarstvennyh posobih semm, vospityvawim dete [On State Bene-
fits for Families Raising Children]. Zakon Respubliki Belarus ot 29 December
2012.
decided to have a third child. Other benefits for higher-order births

include tax incentives and low interest mortgage plans, while the state lifts
the mortgage burden if the family has four or more underage children.
However, economic insecurity combined with a poor housing situation
reduced the number of Belarusians considering having more than two
children (Amialchuk et al., 2011), with social rejection and stereotyping
of large families being further reasons for that decline (Denisov et al.,
2012). Moreover, a major discrepancy in family sizes exists between cities
and villages, with a significant number of large families living in rural
areas, contributing to the staggering gap in TFR that reaches 3.1 in rural
and 1.3 in urban areas in 2017.6 Nevertheless, both fertility rates and
overall population are also declining in rural areas.
The ‘strategic family’ policy envisages the fertility decline in consider-
ably narrow terms, using it instrumentally to mobilize the social support
for the regime by consolidating public opinion. The incentives for higher-
order births are deployed to maintain higher fertility rates in economically
deprived rural regions that represent the bulwark of the regime since
the mid-1990s (Beichelt, 2004; Manaev, 2006), rather than among the
potentially less loyal urban population. On the other hand, a declining
TFR in rural areas could be seen as a factor contributing to the erosion
of the social support of Lukashenko (Ioffe, 2014).
3.2 Russia
The Russian Government has prioritized the demographic crisis as one of
the most pressing problems since 2006. However, the challenge has been
largely perceived within the context of national security and the conser-
vative geopolitical rationale. The ‘Demographic Policy of the Russian
Federation for the Period until 2025’, formulated by the President’s
directive in 2007, set the goal of increasing the cumulative fertility rate
by 1.5 times until 2025, i.e. to around 2.1.7 The government announced
6 Demografiqeski eegodnik Respubliki Belarus, 2011–2018 [Demographic

Yearbook of the Republic of Belarus, 2011–2018]. Nacionalny statistiqeski
komitet Respubliki Belarus (Belstat).
7 Ob utverdenii Koncepcii demografiqesko politiki Rossisko
Federacii na period do 2025 goda [Presidential degree [decree] on general demo-
graphic policy of Russian Federation until 2025]. Ukaz Prezidenta Rossisko
Federacii ot 9 October 2007 g. № 1351.
a revamp of the demographic policy at the end of 2017 to further stim-

ulate the growth of the fertility rate through four policy channels.8 First,
it introduced monthly payments to families with first-child or second-
child births or adoption if their income does not exceed 1.5 times the
subsistence level of employed population in the respective region. This
measure indicates a transformation of pro-natal policies with the focus
shifting from multiple births per family to low-income families, who are
often young. The current measures thus stimulate more families to have
children at a younger age, at the same time risking an increase in child
poverty.
Second, the ‘maternity capital’ programme introduced in 2006 was
prolonged for 3 more years, i.e. until the end of 2021. Under the
programme, individuals giving birth or adopting second or higher-order
children are entitled to receiving a certificate for the sum of $6,804.9
The certificate can be redeemed for the following purposes: improving
housing conditions, children’s education, the mother’s pension funds, the
purchase of goods and services needed for the integration of disabled
children into the society. Under certain conditions, the certificate can
also be used for receiving monthly payments.10 The third policy direc-
tion expands the number of regions receiving co-financing for payments
to families with the third and higher-order births from the federal budget
from 50 in 2017 to 60 in 2018, covering all regions with a cumulative
fertility rate below 2.0.11 Finally, mortgage subsidies were introduced for
families with second or third children born between January 2018 and
8 Zasedanie Koordinacionnogo soveta po realizacii Nacionalno

strategii destvi v interesah dete [Session of the Coordination Council
for the implementation of the National Action Strategy for Children], November 28,
2017.
9 Indexed for inflation from the original $3,755 in 2007 at 20 September 2018
exchange rates.
10 O dopolnitelnyh merah gosudarstvenno podderki seme, imewih
dete [On additional measures of state support for families with children]. Federalny
zakon 29 December 2006 N 256-FZ.
11 Ob utverdenii pereqn subektov Federacii, v kotoryh v 2018 godu
budut sofinansirovats rashodnye obzatelstva po podderke seme v svzi
s rodeniem tretego rebnka ili posleduwih dete [On approval of the list of
constituent entities of the Russian Federation in which in 2018 expenditure commitments
to support families in connection with the birth of a third child or subsequent children
will be co-financed]. Ukazom Prezidenta Rossii ot 7 ma 2012 goda №606.
the end of 2022, whereby the state subsidizes interest rates of above 6%
per year.12
These monetary measures, temporary in nature, are taken in addi-
tion to the general (non-temporary) child and maternity allowance policy,
which includes maternity allowance and childcare allowance during mater-
nity leave and monthly child benefits. The President’s 2017 guidelines
also included two qualitative goals: first, reducing the waiting time to
kindergartens for children between 2 months and 3 years old and, second,
improving the access to and quality of medical services for children.13
While the monetary incentives of the four above mentioned points already
found realization in legislation and specific measures, the latter two were
only delegated to the government to be included into the 2024 strategy
planning.14
The sustainability and the lasting effect of monetary measures are
questionable. Monetary incentives were in place since the introduc-
tion of the maternity capital in 2007, but the fertility rate remained
below the goals (Frejka & Zakharov, 2012). The existing fertility poli-
cies confirm the government’s short-term focus on mobilizing electoral
support during the political-business cycles, rather than achieving inter-
generational improvement of fertility rates. The episodic growth in TFR
was widely used during the presidential campaign in 201215 as a ‘success
story’, a success that was actually due to a slowdown in the postponement
of childbearing (Frejka & Zakharov, 2013).
An interesting development in fertility in Russia concerns discrep-
ancies in different population groups. Despite the overall decline, the
12 Predostavlenie subsidi gradanam Rossisko Federacii, imewim

dete [Provision of subsidies to citizens of the Russian Federation with children].
Pravitelstva Rossisko Federacii ot 30 dekabr 2017 g. No 1711.
13 Zasedanie Koordinacionnogo soveta po realizacii Nacionalno
strategii destvi v interesah dete [Session of the Coordination Council for
the implementation of the National Action Strategy for Children], 28 November 2017.
14 O nacionalnyh celh i strategiqeskih zadaqah razviti Rossisko
Federacii na period do 2024 goda [On the national goals and strategic objectives of
the development of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2024]. Ukaz Prezidenta
Rossisko Federacii ot 7 May 2018 g. № 204.
15 Poslanie Prezidenta Federalnomu Sobrani [Message from the President
to the Federal Assembly], Administration of the President of Russia. [Online] http://kre
mlin.ru. Accessed 7 September 2018.
TFR of several ethnic groups living in Russia is still above the replace-
ment rate (Zakharov, 2018: 50). Ethnic Russians have the second lowest
fertility rate of all major ethnic groups living in the country. These differ-
ences contribute to the changing ethnic composition of Russia alongside
migration. Ethnic groups with higher fertility rates are also becoming
more indigenized. For instance, among federal subdivisions, Chechnya
has one of the highest birth rates in Russia (Sievert et al., 2011), and the
federal unit is the most mono-ethnic area (Rosstat, 2013). Formerly, this
region was a flashpoint of internal conflict in the country (Lieven, 1999).
In this regard, the fertility differential and indigenization of the region
may lay ground for potential ethnic-nationalist mobilization as hypothe-
sized by the effect of young men bulges on political violence (Sommer
2018; Urdal, 2004). However, the recent demographic trends show the
convergence of birth rates between minorities, including Muslims and the
Russian majority.
3.3 Ukraine
The fall in fertility rate, coupled with increased emigration and high
mortality, presents a major demographic challenge, contributing to the
prospect of a rapid population decline in Ukraine by 2050 (Lutz et al.,
2017). Ukraine’s total fertility rate of 1.374 births per woman in 2017
was the lowest since 2008, while total live births declined dramatically
from 520,700 in 2012 to 465,900 in 2014 to 364,000 in 201716 (Timo-
nina, 2017: 51). Economic and political turmoil in preceding years, along
with the unresolved conflict in the east of the country, aggravated the
fertility crisis in that families consciously delay childbearing or decide
to have fewer children. Additionally, the average salaries in Ukraine are
among the lowest in Europe, and GDP per capita is around two times
smaller than in Belarus and four times smaller than in Russia (World
Bank, 2014), further discouraging family planning. Moreover, the fertility
rate is higher in villages, where socio-economic conditions are worse
than in cities. In 2017, the rural fertility rate was 1.522 compared to
1.283 in urban areas (Timonina, 2017: 51). Relatedly, the UN medium
variant population projection estimates that Ukraine will undergo a more
dramatic population decline than Belarus or Russia, with a population
16 Crimea, Sevastopol, and parts of the Donetsk and Lugansk oblast were not included
in statistics from 2014 on.
decrease of 7.8 million or nearly 18% population decrease by 2050 (UN,

2017).
Occupied with economic and political reforms, the Ukrainian Govern-
ment has not paid much attention to fertility policies, which remain
largely limited to monetary incentives. The National programme provides
family incentives via payment of $1,473 for one birth. The payment
is made in two parts: a lump sum payment of $368 in the two to
three months after birth and the rest in monthly payments of $31 for
3 years.17,18 Additionally, there is monthly monetary support to families
with an income below subsistence level for each family member, including
single parent families and single parents who do not receive alimony. The
amount of the payment is limited to 75% of the subsistence minimum and
based on its difference to the current income. 19
4 Political Determinants of Pension Reforms

Although the three countries share similar features of population ageing
(low fertility but high adult mortality rate), the frequency and high ampli-
tude of demographic waves are more pronounced in case of Russia.
Moreover, Russia’s ageing is characterized by an unusually high excess
mortality for men, with the latest data showing the gap standing at
11.1 years (Zakharov, 2018). As the population pyramid in Fig. 1 illus-
trates, the higher proportion of women spreads from the age of 40
onwards and will not disappear by the middle of the century. The gender
gap in mortality is 11 years for Belarus and 9 years for Ukraine, which are
likewise among the highest in the world (WHO, 2014) (Fig. 1).
The life expectancy differentials appear across the regions of Russia
and between rural and urban areas in Belarus and Ukraine. The Caucasus
holds the highest rankings within Russia, with a life expectancy of
17 Pro deravnu dopomogu sim’m z ditmi [State program on family with children].
Redakci vid 20 January 2018. [Online] http://zakon.rada.gov.ua. Accessed 17 October
2018.
18 Pro Deravni bdet Ukra|ni na 2018 rik [About the State budget of
Ukraine for 2018]. Redakci vid 13 December 2018. [Online] http://zakon.rada.gov.ua.
Accessed 14 December 2018.
19 Pro deravnu socialnu dopomogu malozabezpeqenim sim’m [On State Social
Assistance to Low-income Families]. Vidomosti Verhovno| Radi Ukra|ni (VVR),
2000, № 35, st.290; VVR, 2016, № 34, st.590.
Fig. 1 Population Pyramids of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine 1990–2020–

2050 (Note Males are to the left [black], females to the right [grey]. Source
80.8 years in Ingushetia, followed by Dagestan (77.2) as of 2016. The

lowest life expectancy is observed in Tuva, at 64.2 years (Timonin et al.,
2017). Given the ethnic differentials in life expectancy, Russia’s latest
census from 2010 shows that the adult mortality rate is higher among
Russians than other ethnic groups. As urbanization progresses in Belarus,
the age composition of rural areas is changing. The number of older
citizens living in rural areas is growing, being exclusively dependent on
intra-family transfers which alter the traditional patterns of rural life of the
elders (Dobrinsky et al., 2016). The patterns are similar in Ukraine, yet
magnified by a higher death rate (Grigoriev et al., 2010; Richardson et al.,
2018). Though adult mortality rates dropped significantly in these coun-

tries when compared to the early 1990s, life expectancy at birth is still
lower than in Western Europe (Rechel et al., 2013) (Fig. 2). However,
with an increasing number of elderly people, the key challenge for the
governments is the need for the pension reforms.
The following paragraphs discuss the pension reforms in connection to
the political consequences of population ageing. Despite the abundance
of coverage on the economic consequences, the effects of an ageing popu-
lation on the political structure have received far less attention in Belarus,
Russia and Ukraine (Vanhuysse & Goerres, 2012; this volume).
Fig. 2 Key Demographic Indicators (Source [1] UN Population Division

[2017]. [2] University of California, Berkeley, and Max Planck Institute for
Demographic Research. The Human Mortality Database. [3] Census reports
and other statistical publications from national statistical offices: National Statis-
tical Committee of the Republic of Belarus [BELSTAT]; Russian Federation,
Federal States Statistics Service [ROSSTAT]; State Statistics Service of Ukraine
[UKRSTAT])
4.1 Belarus
The pension system of the post-Soviet Belarus is characterized by a PAYG
(pay-as-you-go) system that uses conventionally defined benefit formulas
for the calculation of pensions (Grishchenko, 2016). Rapid ageing places
the Belarusian economy under pressure, with a shrinking working popu-
lation ratio. The government responded to the situation by rising the
pension age to 58 for women and 63 for men in 2017.20 A more radical
pension reform would be politically unacceptable for the ruling regime
for two reasons. First, Lukashenko’s supporters among the Belarusian
population have distinct demographic characteristics (Manaev, 2006). The
largest group consists of retired or economically inactive elderly citi-
zens in rural areas, many of whom are less educated and have minimal
contact with people outside of their immediate social circle (Ioffe, 2014;
Nikolyuk, 2011). Convinced supporters of President Lukashenko are
against privatization of the public sector and state property and see no
problematic issues with democracy, electoral freedom or the state of
human rights in Belarus (Wilson, 2011: 83). Most importantly, pension
benefits are their primary income support, making them susceptible to
pension reforms.
Second, the sine qua non of the pension reform is reforming PAYG-
based public pensions including various defined benefit (DB) schemes,
point schemes, and notional defined contribution (NDC) schemes
(Grishchenko, 2016). An extensive systematic pension reform, therefore,
needs modernization of the economy and the establishment of stronger
links between tax-based contributions and pension benefits (Myles &
Pierson, 2001; Wang et al., 2016). However, these reforms would contra-
dict the authoritarian political conditionality, a mechanism that allocates
and uses financial resources to sanction or reward recipients to aggrandize
authoritarian leadership (Brooker, 2013).
4.2 Russia
The Russian pension system is based on social insurance notional and
individual accounts (Grishchenko, 2016). Financing is based on contri-
butions, but these are primarily covered by the employers, the state or the
20 O pensionnom obespeqenii otdelnyh kategori gradan [About pensions

for certain categories of citizens] Ukaz № 233 ot 29 in 2017 g.
self-employed. With the intensifying population ageing, financing pension

benefits become increasingly difficult for the government. Also, a cyclical
increase in pension benefits is not due to the structural changes in the
economy but mostly due to the oil-led welfare policy (Cerami, 2009).
During the third presidential term of Vladimir Putin (2012–2018),
pension reforms were formulated to develop individual accumulative
accounts, diversify the financing of the system and increase the age of
pension eligibility (Aasland et al., 2017). However, public opinion was
strongly against the increase of age in pension eligibility (Avtsinova et al.,
2018). Indeed, Putin won re-election for his fourth overall term in office
in 2018 through the campaign promise not to increase the pension age.
This promise did not last long, as Duma introduced pension reforms in
June 2018, increasing the pension ages from 55 to 63 for women and
from 60 to 65 for men (Kluge, 2018). The incumbent politicians justify
the reform in a narrative similar to Western European countries, but the
realities of Russia in terms of lower healthy life expectancy, poverty among
the elderly population, an ineffective health system and a gender gap in
mortality are noticeably different.
The pension reforms are a necessary predicament to elevate the
fiscal burden from the national budget given the increasing ratio of
pensioners in Russia to the employed. However, similar to Belarus, the
pension reforms contradict the conceptual premise of the competitive
authoritarianism (Levitsky & Way, 2010; Way, 2005). Pensioners are a
critical electoral demographic for Russia’s current political regime, mostly
comprising women who dramatically outnumber men and live consider-
ably longer. Infamously defined as ‘The regime of Babushkas’, Russia is
thus facing a dilemma in its attempt to cope with the demographic crisis,
specifically population ageing and guarding its core electorate (Robertson,
2009).
4.3 Ukraine
The solidarity pension insurance system of Ukraine is financed on
a PAYG-basis and administered by the Pension Fund of Ukraine
(Slobodyanyuk et al., 2017). Ukraine’s pension reform was introduced
in October 2017, aiming to tackle poverty among elderly citizens, albeit
without much success. Recalculations of pension benefits only marginally
increased the pensions.
Ukraine’s population is not only shrinking, but also increasingly

ageing. By 2050, one-third of Ukraine’s population is projected to be
above 60 years old, the highest rate among the three countries studied
(UN, 2017). Ukraine hosts 12 million pension beneficiaries in various
categories who depend on 14 million contributors.21 Furthermore, the
cohorts entering retirement will be considerably larger than the young
cohorts entering the labour market, which further increases the age
dependency ratio.
The most common explanation of population change in countries
in Eastern Europe and the Middle East is that it is underpinned by
the distribution of ‘youth bulges’ in the society causing political insta-
bility and conflict, inimical to the democracy (Cincotta, 2005; Urdal,
2004). In a positive way, demographic progress could support move-
ment from autocracy to democracy (Sommer, 2018). In the case of
Ukraine, rapid population ageing, unprecedented outward migration and
low fertility rates do not allow the country to recuperate from the political
disturbances of the past two decades.
5 Understanding Migration Politics

As a key demographic driver, immigration presents policy leverage and
counteracts the ageing effects of persistent low fertility levels (Grant
et al., 2004). In contrast, emigration interrupts human capital formation
and calls into question the future of the economic development (Beine
et al., 2008). Moreover, migration has a political impact upon popula-
tion composition in terms of its ethnicities, religions, races, languages
and national origins (Teitelbaum, 2014). Belarus, Russia and Ukraine
actively pursued similar population policies; however, their migration poli-
cies and situations are notably distinctive. Additionally, the Ukrainian
crisis accelerated population shifts in the region.
The principal Soviet tools for regulating internal migration were the
internal passport and propiska (residence permit) designed to realize
certain economic goals (i.e., distribution and rationing), coercive ones
(the repression of dissent, surveillance) and regime adherence (Light,
2012: 405). The central Soviet Government administered population
21 Demografiqna ta socialna statistika, Rynok truda [Demographic and Social

Statistics, Labor Market]. Publikaci dokumentiv Deravno| Slubi Statistiki
Ukra|ni. [Online] https://ukrstat.org/uk. Accessed 11 November 2018.
relocation across the Union to propel the industrialization and urban-

ization to create a shared identity. Policymakers in the three studied
countries began supporting immigration in the early 1990s by adopting
market regulations. However, the countries were not able to respond
effectively to the wave of newcomers.
5.1 Belarus
Belarus presents a unique situation when it comes to migration policy.
The government strictly regulates the migration process, monitors Belaru-
sian emigrants in Europe and only allows limited numbers of immigrants
to live in the country. This approach can be rationalized through the
political economy of migration, which suggests that immigrants living in
a democratic host country are more likely to export democracy to their
countries of origin through the grassroots organizations entrenched in
transnational political activities (Aleinikoff & Klusmeyer, 2011; Bauböck,
2003; Walzer, 1983). However, this political stance became difficult to
maintain in the aftermath of the Ukrainian crisis insofar as Belarus has
become a major host country for Ukrainian migrants.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, migrants usually used Belarus
while en route to the European Union (EU) (Greenhill, 2010; Jandl,
2007). However, since the conflict erupted, Belarus has become a safe
place for migrants from the Donetsk region. Furthermore, migrants from
Ukraine have historically been treated differently, demonstrating high
degrees of adaptability and integration due to cultural and linguistic
similarities (Gentile, 2017). Additionally, specific regulations were set to
address Ukrainian migrants, lifting barriers in the application process and
informing migrants on jobs available.22 Nonetheless, Ukrainian migrants
still do not have access to health care and other social benefits, and there
is no legal obligation on the government to provide refugees with shelter
and necessary allowances.
Overall, Belarus has become the host to more than 150,000 migrants
from Ukraine, including refugees, economic migrants and people with
22 O prebyvanii gradan Ukrainy v Respublike [About the stay of citizens of

Ukraine in the Republic of Belarus]. Norms of Presidential Decree of 30 August 2014,
№420.
family ties in Belarus in the period 2014–2017.23 The total contribution

of the Ukrainian migrants increased Belarus’ population by more than 1%.
Consequently, Belarus has more Ukrainian migrants per capita than any
other country. At the same time, the sheer volume of migrants has put
pressure on Belarus’ economy. The Belarusian Government is particularly
interested in allocating migrants in rural areas as labour force shortage is
omnipresent in agriculture (Gentile, 2017).
5.2 Russia
Starting in 1991, large movements of migrants from post-Soviet coun-
tries have been a demographic reserve to the declining population in
Russia, which today interplays with a resurgence of Russian nationalism.
For instance, the ethnically-motivated migration reached its peak in 1994
with an official influx of 1.2 million immigrants (Sievert et al., 2011).
However, while immigration eases the labour shortage in the period
of population decline, it is not enough to prevent the trend (Ioffe &
Zayonchkovskaya, 2010).
In 2007, the first attempt to liberalize the legislation on migration
was made by the Russian Government, which was caused by the concern
over labour market demand (Zayonchkovskaya, 2007). The legislation
defined more favourable conditions for the employment of migrants
from the Commonwealth Independent States (CIS) (Malakhov & Simon,
2014). However, the liberal attempts were soon curtailed by the restric-
tive measures when the state replaced the simplified work permits without
a quota with a system of ‘patents’ with much higher requirements for
foreigners to work in Russia (Malakhov & Simon, 2018). The new
regulation of migration soon became the subject of corruption at the
23 We refer to several data sets and official statements to estimate the migrants from
Ukraine to Belarus. However, the discrepancy is registered across various sources. For
example, Lukashenko has repeatedly mentioned 150.000 migrants from Ukraine in his
statements. In contrast, the Internal Affairs Ministry Statistics report about 42,000
refugees from Ukraine in the period 2014–2017 while not including the general number
of the migrants. The Ostrogorski Centre, a non-profit organization dedicated to analyse
Belarus in transition to market economy and the rule of law, conducts migration barom-
eters that confirm 150.000 Ukrainian migrants in the aftermath of the Ukrainian crisis.
Also, we examined quarterly reports by the National Statistical Committee of the Republic
of Belarus between 2014 and 2017. The number is close to 151.000 Ukrainian migrants.
Finally, we estimate overall 150.000 migrants moved to Belarus since 2014.
regional level. The authorities intentionally increased the price of patents

to bargain, which forced potential migrants into illegality (Malakhov
& Simon, 2016). Though the regulatory framework has evolved, the
government failed to effectively integrate migrants into the labour market.
Moreover, immigrants from the CIS are often low-skilled workers and
face barriers to integrate into the society. Conversely, increasing numbers
of highly qualified Russians are moving to Europe and the United States
of America (Zayonchkovskaya, 2007).
The fear of immigration is widespread, commenced with the percep-
tion that ‘newcomers would tilt the demographics in their favor’ and that
a so-called Islamization of Russia could follow (Center, 2017). Opinion
polls show germinating xenophobia against immigrants (Sievert et al.,
2011), almost exclusively against immigrants from non-Slavic or non-
European origins (Gorodzeisky, 2019: 205). In the course Russia’s polit-
ical system consolidating towards authoritarian rule (Riabov & Riabova,
2014), however, the Kremlin has increasingly manipulated the inclu-
siveness of national identity. Due to the increasing ethnic prejudice in
the country, as well as the perceived threat to national identity, the
Kremlin ruling elite now faces an immigration dilemma, as its manipula-
tive narrative directly contradicts Russian migration policy and its labour
needs.
Indeed, as an example, the main policy narrative during the Russian
annexation of Crimea was that it safeguarded the national identity of
Russian-speaking people in post-Maidan Ukraine. While this line of
argumentation was mainly used to mobilize the domestic audience,
the attempt at outbound legitimization of the foreign-policy deci-
sions was related to the contested international norms concerning self-
determination, secession, independence and the Kosovo-Crimea parallel
constantly drawn by the Russian Government (Rotaru & Troncotă,
2017). Subsequently, Crimea’s status referendum in 2014 resulted in
favour of the unification of the peninsula with Russia. Following the refer-
endum, Russia attempted to affirmatively expand in-migration with the
considerable impact of ‘russification’ of the peninsula as implicitly stated
in the Regional Development Strategy.24 Though with serious discrepan-
cies, official statistics show that at least 140,000 people have moved to
24 Strategi socialno- konomiqeskogo razviti respubliki krym do 2030

goda [Strategy socio-economic development of the republic of Crimea until 2030].
[Online] https://rk.gov.ru. Accessed 17 September 2018.
the peninsula, mainly from Russia, while simultaneously a similar number

of former residents of Crimea have moved to Ukraine.
The shifts in the ethnic composition of Crimea may help to further
cement Russia’s position on the peninsula. At the same time, the number
of asylum seekers from Ukraine in Russia reached almost 430,000 people
(UNHCR, 2018). Similarly to Ukraine, the influx of forced migrants was
also considered a threat to security and social stability by host communi-
ties (Borisova, 2014). During the first wave of post-conflict immigration,
people settled close to the borders. However, migrants were constantly
re-allocated to other areas, up to the East, the Volga region and to the
Urals via pre-assigned refugee quotas with further restrictions imposed on
moving to Moscow, Saint Petersburg and some other areas (Kuznetsova,
2015; Mukomel, 2017).
5.3 Ukraine
During the period of Yanukovych’s presidency (2010–2014), Ukraine
witnessed popular discontent with the political order and faced a zero-
sum choice to accept either Russia’s or the West’s terms of agreement
into their respective regional integration projects. The country has strictly
fractionalized into two political camps: one fundamentally pro-Russian
and the other fundamentally pro-European. The regime change brought
about by Maidan in 2014 threatened Russia’s interests in the region, vali-
dating the possibility that oligarchic-capitalist regimes could be ousted by
a sustained popular uprising. The consequent Ukrainian crisis was ulti-
mately militarized and internationalized with social, cultural and political
consequences.
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC),
mass population shifts from Ukraine resulted in the fifth largest number
of IDPs in the world, reaching 1.5 million, predominantly uprooted
from the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and Crimea (GRID, 2016;
MoSP, 2018). As previous studies have shown, the arrival of IDPs into
host communities is often embroiled in complex intergroup dynamics,
frequently defined by stereotyping, discrimination and power relations
further accelerated by poor socioeconomic situation and political insta-
bility (Bohnet et al., 2018). Similar patterns have been recorded in
the case of Ukraine categorizing IDPs as a social threat.25 Moreover,

Ukrainian Government has consistently failed to address problems of
IDPs, resulting in policy and protection gaps. Only in September 2018,
the Supreme Court ruled to entitle IDPs to pension benefits. At the
same time, the Court ruled that the residence registration of an IDP
is temporary in its nature, thus constituting no grounds for its holder’s
participation in local elections, effectively restricting political representa-
tion of the IDPs. This ruling bears important electoral consequences for
the upcoming elections in 2019, since 75% of the respondents among
IDPs voiced their distrust of the incumbent President in the survey on
the political preferences and attitudes of IDPs (IFES, 2018).
Furthermore, Ukraine is one of the major sending countries in inter-
national migration, with more than 10% of Ukrainians living and working
abroad (Van Mol et al., 2018). While Russia had previously been a
top destination for immigrants from Ukraine, the political re-orientation
following the so-called EuroMaidan, coupled with the conflict between
the two countries and a downturn in the Russian economy, caused a
major change in this pattern (Düvell & Lapshyna, 2015). EU countries
are increasingly becoming a major destination for migrants from Ukraine.
The introduction of the visa-free travel regime with the EU is expected
to further contribute to this trend. Young people especially are prone
to move from Ukraine to European countries in search for higher salaries
and better opportunities (Van Mol et al., 2018). Outflow of skilled labour
and young people contributes to the overall population decline in this
country. Around one-fifth of Ukraine’s working population live abroad
(Strielkowski & Sanderson, 2013: 315), exacerbating the repercussions
of ageing and undermining the prospects of economic growth.
6 Conclusion
The interdisciplinary study of the link between population change and
political developments resides in the nexus among demographic processes,
25 Ivawenko, K., Stegni O. “Mi blizkist ta vidquennm: stavlenn

naselenn Ukra|ni do vimuxenih pereselenciv z Krimu ta Donbasu (problemi,
tendenci| ta rekomendaci|), Ukra|nske suspilstvo: monitoring socialnih zmin
(pid red. Voroni V., Xulgi M.). Ki|v: Institut sociologi| NANU, s.295”
[Between closeness and alienation: the attitudes of the Ukraine’s population towards
IDPs from Crimea and Donbas: problems, tendencies and policy recommendation] [in
Ukrainian],” 2015.
discourses and policies. Based on this interplay, we have shown that popu-
lation policies in the three countries reflect the resurgence of Russian
nationalism, the authoritarian attempt to consolidate the public opinion
in Belarus and the emergency attempt to save the declining population in
Ukraine. To conclude, we now discuss these concepts.
As concepts and disciplines, demography and politics draw bi-
directional causal links between demographic variables to the political
structure of society (Goerres & Vanhuysse, 2012). For instance, first
going from demography to politics, population change influences political
transitions (Cincotta, 2005; Organski et al., 1984), revolutions (Gold-
stone, 1991) and participation in regional and international conflicts
(Cranmer & Siverson, 2008). In the second direction, e.g. democracy
increases life expectancy (Mathers et al., 2001), depresses infant mortality
(Nussbaum, 2010), and decreases fertility rates (Da Rocha & Fuster,
2006).
For reference to European demographic trends, Teitelbaum (2014)
conceptualizes that demographic changes on political representation
depend fundamentally upon the nature of the political systems. Thereby,
the electoral institution is the central mechanism that transforms changing
population preferences into the legislative norms and registers the source
of political leadership in European democracies (Billingsley & Ferrarini,
2014). Therefore, e.g. family policies and pension reforms are the
outcomes of democratic deliberation. It would be misleading, however,
to assume a similar mechanism is applicable in the cases of Belarus, Russia
and Ukraine. Indeed, although the demographic shifts placed demands
on the governments, as we have shown, deliberative and decision-making
bodies within authoritarian parties and legislatures adopted policies to
pervade authoritarian rule rather than genuinely address demographic
challenges (Boix & Svolik, 2013). Thus, while the above analysis used
the European examples to guide the usage of concepts, we applied
those concepts as perspectives that require attention to the realities
of demographic trends and political structures in Belarus, Russia and
Ukraine.
All in all, given the bi-directional links, we conclude that the demo-
graphic trends, if not addressed by policymakers in these countries,
could destabilize these countries or indeed the entire region. As we
show, the distinct characteristics in population change Belarus, Russia and
Ukraine include fertility variation across ethnic groups, a major gender
gap in mortality, unstable life expectancy trends and migration tenden-

cies aggravated by conflicts and economic downturns. As we have shown
throughout, unlike in established European democracies, governments in
authoritarian and transitional regimes are generally less able to mitigate
the risks arising from the demographic change, as they are less flexible
and less responsive to the transformational processes taking place in soci-
eties as their result. Specifically, the monetary-based, pro-natalist family
policies deployed by all three countries are only oriented to the short-
term and do not sufficiently address the need for qualitative change in
e.g. childcare and health systems. However, the way that demographic
variables influence the political structure still remains largely unexplored,
especially in relation to Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, and this chapter and
its conclusion are at best a first step for future research.
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holder.
CHAPTER 17
Epilogue: Global Political

Demography—A Depressing Outlook?
Stuart A. Gietel-Basten
1 Introduction
This book and its corresponding Global Political Demography database
(Goerres et al., 2020) represent an ambitious attempt to survey the global
state of political demography in a coherent and streamlined fashion.
Between them, the country-level chapters cover more than half of the
world’s population, while the thematic chapters at the start draw linkages
across ideas and issues which run through the book. Each chapter offers
something new—or at least presents a novel spin or interpretation—on
the familiar. And yet, when read in combination, a key question which
emerges is whether we are nonetheless left with the same, rather bleak
outlook of the future which has thus far seemed to be the ‘destiny’ of
demography? From several angles, this may be hard to deny.
At first sight, the chapters seem to suggest that we are trapped in a
‘world of two demographies’. Western and Eastern Europe and the post-
Soviet republics (Kazimov & Zakharov, this volume; Naumann & Hess,
S. A. Gietel-Basten (B)
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Sai Kung, Hong Kong
SAR
e-mail: sgb@ust.hk

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_17
430 S. A. GIETEL-BASTEN
this volume;Vanhuysse & Perek-Bialas, this volume), Japan and South

Korea (Klein & Mosler, this volume) are well known for being ‘hotspots’
of population ageing. We can also show that southeast Asia (Ziegenhain,
this volume), China (Noesselt, this volume), Brazil and Argentina (Wachs
et al., this volume), Australia and New Zealand (MacDonald & Markus,
this volume) and the US and Canada (Sciubba, this volume) are strug-
gling with this phenomenon. Whether there is an advanced welfare and
pension system in place or only a residual one, the notion is that the
process of ageing is proceeding too quickly. Meanwhile, in other parts
of the world it could be said that the process of population ageing is
not proceeding quickly enough. In the Maghreb (Bonci & Cavatorta,
this volume), in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan (James & Balachandran,
this volume), in sub-Saharan Africa (Biira & Hartmann, this volume),
and in the other areas explored in the thematic chapters by Skeldon
(this volume), Skirbekk and Navarro (this volume) and Cincotta and
Weber (this volume), there is a perceived link between the persistence of
(relatively) high fertility and negative policy and political consequences.
The political consequences of these different (albeit well-characterized)
pathways of demographic change can be expected to be different in
different places (Vanhuysse & Goerres 2012; this volume). In a signifi-
cant advance on the extant literature, Cincotta and Weber (this volume)
explore the relationship between the transition from a younger to an older
society and particular types of conflict. Meanwhile, managing democratic
systems with some kind of equity in extremely heterogeneous settings
such as the ‘super-size democracies’ of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan
(James & Balachandran, this volume) could be extremely challenging.
The challenges associated with population ageing (and stagnation) are
well known. Ageing can represent not only a threat to productivity,
economic growth and the functioning of state institutions; but is also a
potential threat to political legitimacy which must be carefully navigated.
On the one hand, intergenerational injustice (Vanhuysse, 2012, 2013,
2014) can be a profound threat to the polity, and one which can lead
to further political and demographic alienation among the young (Lutz
et al., 2006; Sabbagh & Vanhuysse, 2010; Torres-Gil & Spencer-Suarez,
2014). Without doubt, courting older voters makes much political sense
in many different settings. On the other hand, enacting reforms to extant
systems (Russia) or not moving fast enough to develop institutional
frameworks to cope with population ageing (Suwanrada, 2008) can be
politically very damaging. In other words, politicians must walk a kind of
17 EPILOGUE: GLOBAL POLITICAL DEMOGRAPHY … 431
political tightrope to try to keep all competing parties in check in these

times of demographic change.
2 Demographic Challenges;
Demographic Responses
A natural response for a policymaker would be to move beyond this
passive tightrope to an active approach of ‘stacking the cards’ of this
particular demographic game in their favour. In this sense, we see
the instinctive reaction would be to view the whole system in a two-
dimensional manner—delivering demographic solutions to demographic
problems. Perhaps the most well known are the various policies designed
to spur fertility, often under the guise of family policy. Whether in Eastern
Europe (Kazimov & Zakharov, this volume; Vanhuysse & Perek-Białas,
this volume), Western Europe (Naumann & Hess, this volume), Japan
or Korea (Klein & Mosler, this volume) or elsewhere (Frejka & Gietel-
Basten, 2016; Gietel-Basten, 2019), these policies have represented an
expensive, yet largely ineffective means of tackling the root cause of
contemporary population ageing. In what would seem a truly remark-
able development just a decade or so ago, China is moving into the
field of promoting childbearing (Noesselt, this volume). While rather
more under the radar, some south-east Asian countries recently high-
lighted pro-fertility policies as a means of demographic renewal (UNFPA,
2016). Even in areas previously considered almost immune to (very) low
fertility such as the US (Sciubba, this volume) and the Nordic coun-
tries, (period) total fertility rates are moving towards levels not seen for
many, many years (UNPD, 2019). This is already prompting discussion
of how such governments should move to spur childbearing in an explicit
manner (Green, 2017). Raising fertility as a means of offsetting popula-
tion ageing is a very crude tool. Remembering that children do not work
(and, indeed, divert resources away from the state and economy), any
potential gain from increasing the fertility rate would take two decades
to show itself—by which time we might assume the political, social, and
economic landscapes may well have moved on anyway.
Clearly, migration is the other major ‘demographic lever’ to tackle
perceived political travails derived from demographic change. Lutz
(2007), for example, described migration as a kind of ‘mitigation’ policy
for the challenges of population ageing in Europe. As an extreme
example, the so-called European Migrant Crisis of the past decade
was perceived by some as offering an opportunity for ‘demographic

revitalisation’ (Adam, 2015). Of course, it has been comprehensively
demonstrated that the notion of ‘replacement migration’ as a means of
holding stable support ratios is a fantasy (Bijak et al., 2007; Coleman,
2002; UNPD, 2001). Plus, as Skeldon (this volume) observes, while
the economic and social benefits of migration are well known in certain
circles, those voices are drowned out by those who focus on the (percep-
tion of) more negative aspects. In some settings, this narrative has become
the central feature for discussions of population policy (Gietel-Basten,
2016). Indeed, as Peter MacDonald and Andrew Markus (this volume)
argue, migration ‘is all about race and immigration’.
These specific challenges related to migration are usually associated
with immediate policies or actions in the context of much longer histo-
ries. Here, we might take Japan/Korea and the US as some paradoxical,
provocative comparators. In terms of ethnic heterogeneity, the two
settings could hardly be further apart. Japan and Korea have, for many
centuries now, been characterized by an inward-looking, monocultural
focus. The US, meanwhile, has been the archetypal cultural and ethnic
melting pot of the world. In Japan and Korea, against this backdrop of a
monocultural society, it is hardly surprising that politicians are struggling
to convince their electorates that immigration is a viable (even neces-
sary) way of shoring weaknesses in their labour force and the economy
in general. But, the US hardly show that five or so centuries of immi-
gration (forced or voluntary) has all of the answers. To be sure, race,
ethnicity, and, by extension, migration was egregiously weaponized by
President Trump. The issues surrounding questions relating to citizenship
(Wines, 2019) and ethnicity in the latest US Census show the depth of
the challenge and distrust on all sides (PRB, 2020). Yet this is just the end
point of centuries of extreme inequalities and the use and manipulation
of ethnicity as a factor in shaping domestic politics by all parties.
This ‘weaponization of the population’ is, as we know, not just asso-
ciated with migration and ethnicity. Gerrymandering is as old as the
hills (Erikson, 1972; Issacharoff, 2002). The manipulation of boundaries
and populations in India, the world’s biggest democracy, is well known
(Shashidhar, 2019). As Biira and Hartman (this volume: 244) show, not
only was the ‘youth bulge’ “weaponized” as part of an “elite-instigated
and controlled mobilization, with violence being one instrument among
others in the political competition” but the very process of migration itself
was politicized.
Of course, the weaponization of fertility—or ‘wombfare’ (Toft,
2012)—for political or other ideological purposes has a long history.
Examples from the past of both coercive and non-coercive pro-natalist
drives in Europe (Pendleton, 1978; Rossy, 2011); the Middle East
(Cetorelli, 2014); and East Asia (Gietel-Basten, 2017) segway neatly into
the recent pro-natalism of Turkey and Iran (Karamouzian et al., 2014)
which link into nationalistic discourses. While the policies in Turkey
(Yılmaz, 2015) and Iran catch the headlines, pro-fertility messaging
around the world has equally nationalistic overtones. Whether it is the
‘Give Birth to a Patriot’ scheme in one Russian city (Weaver, 2007);
Italy’s ‘Fertility Day’ (which was called ‘sexist, ageist, and anachronistic’
and ‘echoing a fascist past’; Coppolaro-Nowell, 2016: n.p.; Payton, 2016:
n.p.); or the reference to low fertility rates in Taiwan as a ‘national security
threat’ (Focus Taiwan, 2011), there is an indelible link between ‘fixing’
birth rates and some appeal to national renewal—even mentioned in the
chapter by Noesselt on China (this volume). Indeed, the recent policy in
Italy to ‘reward’ parents who bear three children with a small plot of land
has been termed ‘neo-medieval’ by opposition politicians (Wyatt, 2018).
Within the context of such policies, a eugenicist angle was/is often to be
found lurking in the midst (Palen, 1986). At the very least, it is clear that
a conservative worldview of the family frequently prevails. Many of the
family policies enacted in Central and Eastern Europe, for example, have
some root of supporting childbearing explicitly within the maintenance
of a ‘traditional’ family unit (Frejka & Gietel-Basten, 2016; Vanhuysse &
Perek-Bialas, this volume). In Hungary, pro-natalist policies are undoubt-
edly part of a broader suite of policies designed to spur national strength
and identity, while imposing a more rigid, conservative notion of the
family (Hašková & Saxonberg, 2016), including curtailing the rights of
sexual minorities (Haynes, 2020).
More broadly, the responsibility for the various population crises seems
to be placed on the shoulders of particular groups of society. Migrants
are told that they do not integrate enough, or that they are seeking a
‘free ride’, or at least an ‘easy life’ at the expense of the good, honest
taxpayer. Younger people in some countries are told that they are feckless
and individualistic and are foregoing their ‘responsibility to reproduce’
their nation. Women predominantly bear the brunt of this. In other coun-
tries, meanwhile, the same young people are labelled a security threat—in
this case, though, the main burden lies on the shoulders of men. Mean-
while, older people are simultaneously cast as a drain on society, intent
on hoarding power and resources at the expense of younger (and future)
generations.
These ‘blame games’ seem to be interpreted in different ways by
different people. Baby boomers, for example, might see the phrase ‘OK
Boomer’ as one of ageism and entitlement on the part of the young.
On the other hand, it can be argued that for the Gen-Zers and Millen-
nials who use the phrase, it is as much about “economic anxiety, the
threat of environmental collapse, and people resisting change” (Romano,
2019: n.p.). In South Korea, younger people are often referred to as the
sampo generation—who have ‘given up’ on marriage, children and dating
(Gietel-Basten, 2019; KJD, 2016). From an intergenerational perspec-
tive, this is presented by some as further evidence of a weak, feckless
youth culture, ‘infected’ with ‘western’ notions of individualism and self-
actualisation. For younger people themselves, however, it is just a rational
rejection of a life which they feel is either outside of their scope of possi-
bility, or would require so many personal sacrifices as to be existentially
very difficult.
The political use of demography appears to have become toxic, then. A
constant, never-ending battle between groups who believe (or have been
convinced) that somehow their interests are not just misaligned, but either
at odds with each other or, worse still, threaten their own. This battle is
carefully choreographed by the people who rarely (if ever) are implicated
in the blame game: leaders (political, business, religious and otherwise).
In this ‘demographic race to the bottom’, people—especially in demo-
cratic societies—are commodified. They are votes, not voters; producers
or receivers of economic goods and services, rather than active citizens
contributing to the commonweal.
3 Into the 2020s: Going from Bad to Worse?

As I write this in June 2020, the US is in the midst of the most signifi-
cant protest and mass racial violence seen since the 1960s. The immediate
catalyst, this time, being the death of George Floyd on the streets of
Minneapolis. At this very moment, crowds are surrounding the White
House and more than 40 cities across the country have implemented a
curfew or other lockdown policy (Bungard et al., 2020). Without doubt,
the roots of this conflict can be traced back to both the legacy of inequali-
ties within American society, coupled with the ‘weaponization of race and
ethnicity’ which has gained ground under President Trump. Joe Biden’s
comment that “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me
or Trump, then you ain’t black” (BBC, 2020a: n.p.) epitomizes both the
polarisation of race and politics in the US, as well as the level of discourse
to which it has stooped. It has been widely argued that the ‘demographic
power’ of the core Trump base (white, working class) has further eroded
since 2016 (Zitner & Chinni, 2020). This may well lead to even more
extreme measures being taken to consolidate the ‘base’ in order to win in
2021.
In India, despite growing unemployment, the problems associated
with demonetization and agricultural woes, the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) roared to a second election victory. Of course, the nationalist
discourses of the BJP were already familiar by 2019, but they were
arguably even stronger in their second election win—for example, the
2014 policies concerning “equal opportunity”, “empowering the Waqf
Boasts, promotion of Urdu, a permanent Inter-faith Consultative mech-
anism to promote harmony and trust” were notably absent this time
around (Kim, 2019: n.p.). Illegal immigrants were explicitly targeted,
with the manifesto stating that they represent “a huge change in the
cultural and linguistic identity of some areas” and “result […] in an
adverse impact on local people’s livelihood and employment” (Kim, 2019:
n.p.). In parts of India (such as Assam), measures associated with the
Citizenship Amendment Bill were claimed to be tools to affect the demo-
graphic make-up of certain areas and to tip the balance of power (further)
in favour of a Hindu nationalist agenda (Sharma, 2019). This issue over
citizenship was the immediate catalyst to the Delhi Riots which began
in February 2020, which resulted in the 53 deaths and thousands of
arrests—but, again, the roots lie in much deeper systemic inequalities.
In Britain, the process of Brexit continues apace. The narrative of such
a major convulsion in the economy, society and body politic being foisted
upon the young by the (English) old still prevails (Schuster, 2016). In
that fateful referendum, of course, the narrative of uncontrolled migration
placing an unbearable strain on public services (as well as the British ‘way
of life’) was central (Gietel-Basten, 2016). Boris Johnson’s mandate to
lead the Conservative Party (and hence become Prime Minister in 2019)
was decided by a party membership of 160,000, of which 71% were male,
97% were white, 86% were middle class and 44% were over 65 years old
(The Economist, 2019). Suffice it to say, this is hardly representative of the
country as a whole.
Of course, these are just a few of the ways in which demography
is at the forefront of political wrangling around the world. The plight
of displaced Rohingya (Zarni & Cowley, 2014), Venezuelans (Tobon-

Giraldo et al., 2019; Wachs et al., this volume), Syrians (Newsham &
Rowe, 2019) and Afghans, to name but a few, periodically feature in
the news cycle. Populist leaders and politicians around the world may
hit the headlines for some especially outlandish remark. Consider the new
Brazilian Minister of Women, Family and Human Resources proclaiming
a ‘new era in Brazil: boys wear blue and girls wear pink’ (Watson, 2020).
Elsewhere, in the past year we saw the imposition of death by stoning for
gay sex and adultery (Westcott, 2019) in Indonesia; the adaption of its
Criminal Code to impose a ban on sex outside of marriage (punishable by
a one-year prison term) and a maximum of four years in prison for women
who have an abortion (unless there were circumstances of medical emer-
gency or rape) (BBC, 2019). In both of the latter cases, an international
outcry led to a partial walking back on these promulgations. What we do
see, however, is a common thread whereby socio-demographic issues are
‘weaponized’ for either political gain, or at least, consolidation.
At the time of writing in June 2020, however, there is one particular
issue which seems to be all-encompassing in many parts of the world:
the COVID-19 pandemic. At the moment, it is impossible to foresee
the entire consequences of the pandemic and how this might impact the
landscape of political demography in different parts of the world. Despite
this, I might dare to suggest that there may be some lessons which can
come out of it. The pandemic has brutally exposed and brought to the
fore many of the inequalities and multiple vulnerabilities which are so
often ‘swept under the carpet’. Firstly, there is clear evidence that the
older population around the world has been disproportionately hit by the
virus—both in terms of infection and fatality (cf. Cruz et al., 2020; Dowd
et al., 2020). In particular, mortality among care homes has been espe-
cially high in many settings (Holt & Butcher, 2020). There may be a sense
that the vulnerabilities of older persons have been brutally exposed in the
pandemic and, in certain countries, it may be the case that this could be
punished at the ballot box. A second group for whom multiple vulner-
abilities have been exposed is migrants. Whether in the dormitories of
Singapore (BBC, 2020b; Han, 2020), performing “dirty, dangerous and
demanding” (Dempster & Smith, 2020: n.p.) work in essential services,
as refugees (Daniels, 2020) or stuck in limbo trying to return to their
home villages in India (Adhikari et al., 2020: 37)—the physical, social and
economic well-being of migrants has been ‘neglected’ (Daniels, 2020).
International (labour) migration has been ‘throttled’. According to the
World Economic Forum, “everyone from a migrant agricultural worker

relying on a paycheck in Portugal to a foreign healthcare worker living
in Sweden is potentially impacted by a dramatic tightening of borders”
(WEF, 2020: n.p.). This will likely have a profound effect not only on the
global Gross Domestic Product (MGI, 2016; WEF, 2020), but also on
remittances affecting families, communities and economies at the national
level (Abel & Gietel-Basten, 2020). Meanwhile, given that the spread of
COVID-19 around the world is still ongoing, it has even been suggested
that migrants fleeing the disease could well be the next vector of migration
flows (Karim, 2020). Of course, the likely economic depression caused by
COVID-19 will bring its own challenges.
4 A Multidimensional, Intersectional Approach

Taking the themes from the first section, and coupling them with the
global news stories from the past couple of years discussed above, there
is perhaps a temptation to just give up; to write off political demography
as a doom-laden misery-fest which only masochistic scholars and nation-
alistic ideologues wish to inhabit. Yet, I think this completely misses the
point. Bonci and Cavatorta (this volume) really capture my own sentiment
in thinking about the real power of not just political demography, but
demography as a whole (Dorling & Gietel-Basten, 2017). For Bonci and
Cavatorta (this volume: 269), “instead of focusing on supposed ‘youth
bulges’ or youth extremism or youth apathy” to explain, in their case,
the “crisis of the Arab world”, they argue that “it is more fruitful to
analyse the structural problems – political and economic – that have led
to uprisings and demands for change”. If I interpret them correctly, this
is essentially arguing that the issue is not the youth bulge itself, but rather
everything else that led to it and operates along with it. This accords with
how I see the very low fertility rates in east and southeast Asia. It has
been commonplace to see these low rates as the ‘problem’ that needs to
be ‘fixed’. As is well known, such efforts to ‘fix’ the problem have been
met with little success. Rather, what we should do is consider such low
fertility as the downstream outcome of various other processes or institu-
tional malfunctions. Low fertility is not the problem itself; rather it is one
symptom of bigger, broader problems in society, economics and politics.
The Dutch demographer Nico van Nimwegen said that “states get the
fertility rates they deserve” (quoted in Gietel-Basten, 2019: 162). We
could expand upon this to say that states get not only the demography
they deserve, but also the interaction between politics and demography.
When we look at political demography in this way, we can go beyond
the superficial, dismal perspective and embrace a more complex, more
multifaceted story. This view forces us to stop and think carefully about
just why some countries have such profound problems with race, ethnicity
and migration. We can think really carefully about why women (and men)
in some places want to have fewer children than they end up having; and,
at the same time, why women (and men) in other countries consistently
state a preference to have more children than they do.
Thinking deeply about these questions forces us to confront some of
the deepest, darkest, most uncomfortable aspects of the societies in which
we live and the things which are taken for granted. How can we just
accept that migrants are treated worse than ‘native’ citizens? How can we
accept that black lives seemingly ‘don’t matter’? How can we accept that
a Democratic nominee can take black votes for granted, and demonise
anyone who dares to think otherwise? It can force us to realize that simply
handing women a few hundred dollars to have another child, with the aim
of propping up a pension system or making a country a little bit more
populous is not only a fool’s errand, but actually adds insult an affront to
dignity.
As the chapters in this book show, there are as many solutions as
there are challenges. Cincotta and Weber (this volume: 88) recognize
that the promotion of a “transition to a more mature age structure” will
only come about through the “lengthen[ing] of girls’ educational attain-
ment, provid[ing] access to modern contraception and information, and
secur[ing] equal rights for women”. Of course, these aspirations should
be ends in their own right. Skeldon (this volume) consistently talks about
the notion of inclusion for migrants, majestically showing how over longer
periods of history, a more inclusionary approach yields rewards for one
and all. Skirbekk and Navarro (this volume) point out that religion can be
a mechanism by which transfers could be elucidated and poverty relieved.
Biira and Hartmann (this volume) note the well-known maxim that a
young population can just as well be an economic boon as a factor in
a security risk. Vanhuysse and Perek-Bialas (this volume) rightly observe
that active ageing programmes in Central and Eastern Europe are ranked
pretty much rock bottom in the world. But, still, these programmes have
been shown in other parts of the world to make a real difference to
both the lives of older persons themselves, and the macro-level impact
of population ageing.
Recent crises have revealed areas where we really must do better

if we stand a hope of a sustainable demographic social future. Foresti
(2020), for example, remarks that rather than gratitude for the work of
migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic, what is really needed is more
reform. Yet, we need to be realistic. Despite the obvious macroeconomic
challenges caused by the potential throttling of migration in the imme-
diate post-COVID world, Foresti (2020) anticipates that we can “expect
even more of an ‘us first’ approach in politics: ‘our’ vaccines, ‘our’ PPE
[personal protective equipment], ‘our’ health, ‘our’ borders, ‘our’ people
first” (Foresti, 2020: n.p.). This jars with the celebration of key workers
as heroes; with the ‘clapping’ and accolades. So what will it take to turn
this gratitude into policy and practice change?
Of course, all of these changes require a choice. This, to me, shows
the true power of studying and understanding political demography. A
common definition of the sub-discipline is that it is the study of “the size,
composition, and distribution of population in relation to both govern-
ment and politics” (Goldstone et al., 2012: 3; Goerres & Vanhuysse,
2012; Vanhuysse & Goerres, this volume). Clearly, governments (and
other stakeholders) go beyond a passive acceptance of the ‘size, composi-
tion, and distribution of the population’, and desire to either manipulate
it, weaponize it, or at the very least harness it. In order to understand
how they do this, we must therefore clearly study the manner in which
these demographic characteristics materialize, and the broader universe in
which they operate. On the flip side, however, if we are thinking about
government and politics, we must also deconstruct how this is built and
operates. At an abstract level, it could be argued that government and
politics is inseparable from power and a desire or need to control and
manage. The kinds of changes set out above will, inevitably, require some
kind of compromise. This might be a ceding of real political power, or
‘sailing against the wind’ by pushing through unpopular changes. It may
require lending a megaphone to voices which are often ignored. It may
require standing up to vested interests in business, and even religion.
This real-world approach shows us the real power of political demog-
raphy. ‘Standard demography’ (if you will) can often descend into a kind
of “spreadsheet” exercise (Wang et al., 2018: 694) which can have a
tendency to extrapolate from observational and regression analyses of rela-
tionships between x and y to produce a ‘perfect (demographic) world’.
From my office on the ninth floor of a white-tiled university (a literal
ivory tower), the answer to the world’s demographic problems are clear:
investment in education, health and infrastructure; completion of the

gender and contraceptive revolutions; improved governance, transparency
and accountability; tackling inequality in all its forms; developing and
reforming institutions to meet the needs of our ageing populations in
the twenty-first century; and so on. But, how on earth do we get there—
especially when our studies show us that there is not only little appetite
to change ‘for the better’, but that there appears to be a desire to exploit
the present travails for political gain? In other words, ‘thinking politically’
about demography forces us to be realistic about not only what changes
we would like to see, but also what the pathways would be to actualize
them. Given the state of the world today, though, it is reasonable to with-
draw back into our shells and see the futility of hoping for the kind of
world which we might aspire to.
On this note we might return to Bonci and Cavatorta (this volume),
who use an important study by Inayatullah (2016) to project a possible
way forward. Inayatullah’s (2016) study mapped out four possible future
scenarios for the MENA region to 2050. Some of these ‘storylines’
were hopeful—of a system of peer-to-peer sharing economies and cyber
cooperatives which bring governments and economies together to work
on shared challenges. Others, however, are bleak—unabated automa-
tion further delivers an unemployed and disempowered youth, stuck in
a broken economic system in which social links, especially intergenera-
tional ones, are fractured. In response to these (and other) scenarios,
Bonci and Cavatorta (this volume: 270) take a more typical, pragmatic
approach, suggesting that “without a fundamental rethink of the role
of the state in the economy […] and in fostering citizen’s rights, the
Tunisian and Moroccan economies are destined to muddle through”. “In
this case”, they continue, “demographic change might indeed coincide
with greater public liberties and even full democratization, but from an
economic perspective not much would change for the vast majority of the
young citizens”.
From a future studies perspective, the ‘prosaic’ approach taken by
Bonci and Cavatorta is entirely to be expected. Yet, the approach of
painting scenarios where political, economic, social and cultural storylines
interweave with each other to create better (or worse) futures—norma-
tively speaking—is still extremely powerful. In the same way that looking
back into history (and across into other spaces) can help us understand
where we are today, so too can looking at various different futures help us
to see where we might be going. More importantly, it can show us that
demography is not destiny, but rather some factors in a multidimensional

set of parameters which we need to negotiate. For this reason, the use of
scenarios in considering population futures is becoming more widespread,
being adopted in the Wittgenstein Centre forecasts (Lutz et al., 2017)
as well as in the IPCC shared socio-economic pathways (Kc & Lutz,
2017). By explicitly including a political/security/international relations
dimension, these scenarios (or shared pathways) allow for a more holistic
(and realistic) view of how the future might pan out, rather than the
more hopeful, theory of change approach which we might more naturally
favour.
As we survey the future, it may well appear that the bleakest scenarios
are the most likely to come to pass. Aside from the impact of COVID-
19, the most ‘optimistic’ scenarios in the Wittgenstein Centre projections
would require not only a tremendous investment in human capital but
for this to occur in some of the countries with the least resources and
the poorest infrastructure and governance systems (WiC, 2015). Meeting
the Sustainable Development Goals at a universal level by 2030 seems a
distant hope; and progress in other areas (such as the implementation of
the Madrid International Plan of Action on Aging) has been weak.
Despite this, there is still room for optimism. Big changes can and
do happen, whether deliberately or organically. A few decades ago it
would have been very hard to predict that Thai people would have
access to universal healthcare (Sumriddetchkajorn et al., 2019); that there
would be a social pension in Myanmar (albeit accessible at a very high
age) (Win, 2017) and that the link between marriage and childbearing
would be effectively severed in the Catholic countries of southern Europe.
Even in the past few, changes in the legal rights of sexual minorities,
including the right to marry, have continued apace. Taiwan became
the first Asian setting to permit such marriages (Cho & Kam, 2019),
while in Switzerland voters approved a ban on anti-gay discrimination
in February 2020 (Fitzsimmons, 2020). In Japan, the #KuToo move-
ment shows how women are fighting back against regressive dress codes at
work in a move which is prompting a national discussion on work culture
(Rachelle, 2019). In South Korea, the government have shifted away from
explicitly pro-natalist messaging towards offering more holistic support
for families to more effectively combine work and family according to
their own needs (Lee, 2018; Jang, 2019). China is on course to elimi-
nate ‘absolute poverty’ (CGTN, 2019) and, through the implementation
of Healthy China 2030, aims to decrease “the health effects of second-

hand smoking, reduc[ing]e obesity, increas[ing]e overall physical activity,
and prevent[ing] chronic diseases” (Chen et al., 2019: e447). Finally, in
response to COVID-19, Portugal has temporarily granted all migrants
and asylum-seekers citizenship rights (Foresti, 2020).
In other words, changes which may well have been difficult to foresee
in the recent past have happened—many negative but many of them also
positive. Surveys increasingly tell us that the next generations have entirely
different value systems, and wish to organize their lives, work and fami-
lies in a completely different manner from ours (Gietel-Basten, 2020).
Perhaps they will succeed in that. There is a strong temptation to look at
the world today and have a bleak outlook of the future—where perhaps
the best we can hope for is to ‘muddle through’. However, by better
understanding how we have got to where we are (including our signif-
icant achievements); by seeing our demographic travails as symptoms of
other challenges rather than ‘problems’ in themselves, we can keep a more
open mind as to what the future might deliver, and grasp a better sense
of what we need to do to craft a better one for us all.
Acknowledgements I am grateful to Christian Joy Pattawi Cruz, Rachel Ganly

and Zilin Li for their feedback on this paper.
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holder.
Index
A Australia, 3, 18, 44, 276–279,

Acemoglu, Daron, 6, 21, 266 281–291, 293–297, 430
Age-bias, 363
Aged nations, 178
Ageing. See also Population ageing B
active, 17, 126, 366, 388, 389 Baby Boomers, 334, 336, 337, 434
Age-structural modelling, 59, 63 Baltic states, 186, 374, 376, 378,
Age-structural theory, 88 381–384, 391
of state behaviour, 60 Bangladesh, 3, 5, 21, 141–149, 153,
Age-structural transition, 58–61, 63, 154, 156, 157, 159, 161, 183,
73, 75, 76, 81, 83–86, 88 430
Age structure, 30, 49, 58–61, 70, 77, Basten, Stuart, 5
78, 81, 85, 89, 93, 108, 142, Behaviour, political, 15, 63, 95, 108,
149, 154, 161, 170, 197, 226, 230, 254
227, 251, 255, 277, 438 Belarus, 3, 17, 18, 401–404,
youthful, 57, 74 408–416, 420, 421
Alesina, Alberto, 97, 364, 378 Birth rates, 121, 122, 124, 128, 171,
Arab Spring, 20, 229, 241, 254, 255, 173, 174, 177, 185, 186, 223,
261, 263, 264, 266 279, 280, 408, 433
Arab uprisings, 248, 249, 254, 262, Brazil, 3, 5, 18, 103, 303–318, 430
266 Bulge
Argentina, 3, 18, 303–318, 430 middle-aged, 197
Artificial intelligence, 131, 133 youth, 2, 4, 5, 16, 20, 22, 33,
Asylum seekers, 34, 49, 289, 290, 49, 57, 58, 61, 84, 85, 154,
363, 418 221, 229, 230, 237, 241–243,
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 451

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9
452 INDEX
247–249, 251, 255, 263, Côte d’Ivoire, 3, 19, 20, 43, 221–223,
265–268, 414, 432, 437 225, 226, 228–237, 241, 242
Czech Republic, 379, 381–384, 391,
392
C
Canada, 3, 18, 19, 103, 260, 291,
326–331, 333, 334, 338, D
340–346, 430 Dasgupta, Partha, 3, 8
Care-workers, 209 Democratization, 220, 248, 261, 268,
Caste system, 97, 160 312, 318, 403, 440
Demographic dividend, 142, 146,
Catholic Church, 175
154, 156, 161, 182, 183, 188
China, 3, 5, 31, 44, 46, 47, 94, 103,
Demographic transition, 21, 38, 49,
106, 107, 117–125, 128–135,
78, 135, 148, 154, 157, 161,
183, 210, 285, 286, 290, 331,
175, 177, 187, 188, 265, 315,
352, 430, 431, 433, 441
316, 352, 357
Chinese Communist Party (CCP),
Demographic window, 17, 178, 181,
120, 121, 125, 131, 132
182, 187, 376, 390, 391, 393
Christianity. See Religion
Dependency ratio, 5, 6, 17, 120, 122,
Cincotta, Richard, 5, 9, 16, 33, 34,
123, 223, 305, 315, 354, 355,
59–61, 63, 70, 84–86, 250, 251,
357–359, 365, 366, 376, 392,
430, 438
414
Civil war, 10, 11, 97, 226, 228, 231,
Diaspora, 15, 31, 42–47, 49
233, 237–239, 241, 242, 325
Discrimination, 129, 150, 159, 160,
Clash, cultural, 326
202, 286, 306, 308, 341, 418,
Class, social, 306, 307, 309
441
Coleman, David, 5, 42, 357, 432
Diversity, cultural, 19, 291, 294
Colonialism, 36, 47, 167, 168, 223,
261, 356
Conflict E
ethnic, 58, 84, 85 Early exit, from the labour market,
intrastate, 58–61, 72, 82, 86, 88 17, 380, 383
non-ethnic, 58 Economic Partnership Agreement
non-territorial, 59 (EPA), 209
religious, 88 Education, 3, 35, 38, 40, 43, 46,
revolutionary, 16, 59–61, 64, 61, 77, 95, 97–99, 108, 119,
70–78, 80–86, 88 128, 129, 133, 147, 152, 154,
separatist, 16, 58, 60–62, 72, 160, 173, 174, 176, 177, 186,
75–77, 80–87, 89 205–207, 226, 228, 229, 241,
social, 199, 267, 316–318 248, 252–256, 258, 263, 284,
territorial, 60 314, 329, 332, 336, 344, 354,
violent, 17, 65, 77, 97, 221, 223 359, 364, 380, 382, 383, 386,
Contraception, 87, 148, 175, 438 391, 406, 440
INDEX 453
Egypt, 221, 254 401–409, 420, 430, 431, 433,

Elderly. See Older people 437
Elderly bias in social spending ‘4-2-1’ dependency dilemma, 119
(EBiSS), 381, 382, 391
Elections, 17, 44, 124, 154, 155,
160, 199, 202, 230, 232–234, G
236, 238, 240, 243, 267, 294, Gender equality, 362
334, 336, 337, 384, 419 Gender ratio, 122
Electorate. See Voters Generations/generational, 7, 42, 107,
Emigration, 10, 17, 31, 45, 46, 143, 125, 132, 135, 170, 188, 199,
184, 241, 254, 259–264, 267, 238, 255, 262, 267, 305, 311,
382, 383, 390, 402, 403, 408, 316, 326, 331, 332, 334, 337,
414 342, 358, 359, 363, 382, 384,
Ethnic cleavages, 379, 392 434, 442
Ethnic groups, 17, 49, 168, 186, 187, Generational conflict. See
223, 278, 401, 403, 408, 410, Inter-generational conflict
420 Germany, 6, 16, 47, 103, 171, 205,
Ethnic heterogeneity, 363, 365, 432 327, 351, 352, 354–356, 360,
Ethnicity, 18, 40, 49, 202, 303, 309, 361, 363
316, 337, 343, 378, 379, 432, Gerontocracy, 7, 12, 16
435, 438 Gietel-Basten, Stuart, 2, 22, 429,
Europe, Western, 3, 16, 17, 19, 170, 431–435, 437, 442
334, 352, 354, 357, 363–366, Goerres, Achim, 2, 5, 7, 8, 11–14,
376, 393, 411, 413, 431 142, 169, 183, 187, 200, 220,
Exit and voice, 87, 241, 261, 266, 248, 251, 317, 318, 334, 352,
286, 338, 362, 379, 390 358, 360, 374, 378–381, 401,
429, 430, 439
Goldstone, Jack, 2, 3, 5–7, 16, 48,
F 49, 58, 61, 170, 174, 176, 177,
Faith. See Religion 187, 229, 420, 439
Family planning, 109, 119, 128, 142, Government expenditure, 278
147, 148, 157, 174–176, 253,
408
Fertility, 2, 3, 8, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, H
21–23, 30, 32, 34, 38, 39, 49, Haggard, Stephan, 383
50, 58, 85, 86, 89, 95, 99, 107, Health care, expenditure, 178, 334,
109, 123, 142–144, 146–150, 357, 358
152, 153, 157–159, 161, 170, Hinduism. See Religion
171, 175, 176, 184–187, 196, Homogeneity, 152, 364
204, 205, 229, 248, 252, Hong Kong, 3, 20, 118, 120,
253, 255, 277–281, 311, 315, 123–125, 132, 134, 135
326–330, 351, 353, 356, 357, Household registration system
360, 361, 366, 374, 386, 390, (hukou), 129–131
454 INDEX
Hungary, 17, 374, 376, 379–383, J

385–393, 433 Japan, 3, 5, 21, 47, 48, 103, 171,
195, 197–200, 202, 203,
205–209, 212, 306, 327, 334,
I 352, 391, 430–432, 441
Identity Jordan, 86, 254
cultural, 93, 343
group, 95, 97
Illegal economy, 256 K
Illiteracy, 119, 173 Kaufmann, Eric, 5, 7, 29, 30, 39, 40,
Immigration, 6, 10, 12, 15, 16, 49, 128, 187, 220, 331, 340,
18, 19, 31, 38–40, 42, 49, 98, 341, 343, 383, 439
124, 126, 183, 187, 207–212, Kerala, 147, 149, 157
237, 261, 279, 283, 287, 289, Kuitto, Kati, 374, 393
291–296, 306, 307, 309, 316,
318, 326–330, 334, 337, 338,
340–346, 363, 364, 383, 414, L
415, 417, 418, 432 Labour demand, 277, 281, 283, 287,
economic, 287, 291, 364 289, 295
humanitarian, 282, 284 Labour force, 5, 30, 94, 98, 117, 119,
Income distribution, 94, 95, 97 120, 122, 124, 126, 128–131,
India, 3, 5, 9, 21, 82, 86, 103, 106, 134, 135, 182, 183, 206, 207,
107, 141–150, 152–161, 168, 209, 254, 259, 277, 315, 316,
183, 285, 286, 331, 430, 432, 357, 359, 362, 416, 432
435, 436 Laitin, David, 379, 392
Indonesia, 3, 21, 36, 86, 167–172, Latvia, 374, 376, 378, 379, 381–383,
174, 176–178, 180–188, 209, 385–389, 392, 393
290, 436 Life expectancy, 6, 16, 18, 119, 121,
Inequality 124, 144, 147, 153, 170–173,
economic, 94, 95, 98, 108, 110 187, 188, 197, 223, 315,
social, 19, 93, 94, 96, 131 327, 334, 339, 351, 352, 354,
Informal economy, 259 357–359, 361, 374, 392, 393,
Informal sector, 154, 156, 157, 181, 402, 403, 409, 410, 413, 420,
226, 248, 252, 256, 257 421
In-migration. See Immigration ‘Limits to growth’-movement, 280
Interculturalism, 341 Longevity, 3, 197
Inter-generational conflict, 363
International students, 283, 284, 286
Islam. See Religion M
Italy, 16, 37, 103, 255, 260, 306, Macao, 3, 20, 118, 120–123, 134,
327, 351, 352, 355, 356, 360, 135
361, 363, 381, 386, 391 Maghreb, 86, 230, 247, 249, 253,
Ivory Coast. See Côte d’Ivoire 255, 256, 260, 267, 430
INDEX 455
Majority, 33, 34, 40, 41, 44, 47, 70, voluntary, 432
85, 86, 98, 122, 142, 156, 159, Millennials, 332, 333, 336, 337, 434
160, 184, 186, 187, 200, 209, Minority
221, 238, 241, 260, 267, 268, status, 337, 338
286, 289, 292, 293, 295, 297, visible, 333, 338
309, 331, 336–339, 343, 408,
Mobility
440
circuits of, 32, 37, 49
Malaysia, 3, 21, 167–171, 174,
176–189, 290 Mobilization, 199, 202, 221, 230–
Marriage, 95, 109, 126, 174, 206, 232, 236–238, 241, 242, 327,
210, 236, 254, 256, 329, 434, 335–337, 408, 432
436, 441 Morocco, 3, 20, 247–249, 251–262,
Metropolitan. See Urban 264, 265, 267, 268
Migration Mortality rate, 5, 64, 119, 174, 223,
control of, 37 251, 356, 401, 409–411
exclusionary dimension, 33 Motherhood
first-generation, 330, 338 postponement of, 354
forced, 32–35 Multiculturalism, 288, 293, 296, 327,
formal, 282 338, 341–344
inclusionary dimension of, 35, 49
influence of, 236
internal, 38, 41, 43, 49, 149, 156,
223, 277, 414 N
international, 3, 10, 14, 22, 23, 30, Narratives, 32, 131
38, 40, 121, 220, 223, 256,
National development goals, 177
277–279, 284, 286, 288, 289,
Nationalism, 341, 343, 416, 420
295, 311, 419
irregular, 279, 289 Nation-building, 379, 392
management of, 45 New immigration countries, 207
marriage, 210 New Silk Road (OBOR/BRI), 125,
net import of, 221 132, 134
permanent, 281, 283 New Zealand, 3, 18, 276–279, 282,
policies or programme, 41, 48, 123, 284, 285, 287, 291, 296, 382,
134, 261, 262, 279, 281–284, 430
287–289, 294, 295, 356, 402, Norms, 15, 147, 344, 363, 417, 420
414, 415, 417 social, 174
replacement, 158, 357, 432 North Africa, 3, 82, 249, 252, 254,
rural-to-rural, 37 255, 257, 258, 260, 262, 265,
second-generation, 226, 338 266
skilled, 281–284, 359 Not in Employment nor Education,
temporary, 281, 284 or Training Rate (NEET), 252,
urban-to-rural, 37 255
456 INDEX
O 189, 314, 357, 358, 360, 379,

Old age, 13, 99, 107, 156, 332, 381, 385, 389, 391, 412, 430, 438
382, 384 People’s Republic of China. See China
spending on. See Population ageing, Philippines, 3, 21, 167–172, 174–178,
finances of 180, 181, 183–188, 209, 221
Old-age dependency ratio (OADR), 5, Pierson, Paul, 358, 383, 412
6, 196, 355, 357, 359, 376, 392 Poland, 17, 186, 374, 376, 378–384,
prospective, 6, 17, 392, 393 386–388, 390, 391
Older people, 7–9, 11–14, 16, 125, Policy
178, 180, 331, 334, 354, 389, domestic, 3, 176
434 family, 3, 360, 386, 387, 404, 431
One-party state, 117, 118, 132 fiscal, 178
Opportunity migration, 41, 48, 261, 282, 283,
for reform, 376, 390, 392 287–289, 294, 363, 402, 415,
missed, 373 417
Out-migration. See Emigration pension, 359, 378, 390
Overpopulation, 175 population, 175, 279, 432
youth, 267
P Political attitudes. See Public opinion
Pakistan, 3, 5, 21, 34, 141–144, 146, Political behaviour, 15, 63, 95, 108,
148, 149, 152–154, 156, 157, 230, 254
159–161, 430 Political debate, 107, 142, 149, 152,
Pampel, John, 379 154, 176, 179, 202, 208, 260,
Parliamentary democracy, 154, 198 277–279, 307, 317, 318, 327
Participation Political instability, 57, 95, 97, 229,
forms of, 230 356, 403, 414, 418
political, 221, 229, 230, 234–236, Political order, 7, 8, 19–21, 32, 110,
312 157, 161, 220, 221, 236, 241,
Party competition, 358 242, 418
Pension. See Retirement Political parties, 152, 155, 156, 160,
Pension crisis, 358 179, 199, 200, 203, 211, 212,
Pensioners 234, 282, 283, 287–289, 296,
booms, 379, 384, 391 297, 307, 308, 317, 337, 338,
power, 17, 381 340
welfare states, 17, 378, 380, 382, Political power, 2, 7, 8, 17, 31, 142,
391 199, 220, 268, 326, 332, 334,
Pension reform, 383–385, 409, 336, 345, 402, 439
411–413, 420 Political transformation, 43
Pensions, early and/or disability, 379, Population ageing, 3, 6, 8, 9, 14,
380 16–20, 22, 23, 117, 177, 178,
Pension system, 17, 19, 22, 119, 126, 184, 202, 203, 205, 277, 278,
130, 131, 135, 168, 178, 181, 295, 303, 304, 308, 314, 316,
INDEX 457
317, 351, 352, 354, 357, 358, Pro-natalist public policy. See Policy,
360–363, 365, 388, 409, 411, population
413, 414 Protest, 125, 179, 220, 230, 236,
finances of, 178, 203, 314, 316– 237, 239, 240, 255, 264, 317,
318, 357–358, 380–387, 389, 345, 379, 434
391, 393 Przeworski, Adam, 379
premature, 187, 188 Public discourse, 154, 404
Population density, 153, 195, 220, Public opinion, 279, 291–293, 405,
223, 251 413, 420
Population distribution, 277, 346 Public policy bias, 6, 17, 381
Public policy change, 21, 131, 267,
Population growth, 7, 29, 33, 34, 93,
281–283, 331, 343
107, 109, 118, 119, 123, 126,
Public policy reform, 131, 390–392
134, 142, 143, 147–149, 167,
169, 170, 173–176, 184, 186, Public policy target, 279
197, 219, 221, 223, 227, 228, Putnam, Robert, 379
249, 251, 256, 276, 277, 279,
280, 284, 288, 297, 311, 316,
327, 328, 330 Q
Population indicators, 353 Quebec, 333, 340, 341, 343, 344
Population pyramids, 62, 126, 172,
198, 251, 304, 328, 354, 374,
375, 410 R
Race/racism, 18, 19, 49, 186, 286,
Population size, 10, 12, 31, 78, 143,
296, 326, 331, 338, 432, 434,
161, 168, 185, 249, 357, 376
435, 438
Populism, 39, 41, 255, 304, 316
Ratio
Poverty, 4, 15, 19, 93, 94, 96–101, gender. See Gender ratio
103, 106–110, 124, 175, 184,
old-age dependency. See Old-age
185, 188, 227, 237, 256, 266,
dependency ratio (OADR)
311, 314–318, 332, 381, 406,
Rebellion, 47, 57, 58, 97, 231, 233,
413, 438
237, 238
absolute, 99, 101–104, 106, 107, Redistribution of resources, 106
133, 441 Refugee. See Migration, forced
relative, 99, 100, 103, 105 Regime stability and/or persistence,
Private sector, 179, 181, 265, 340 117, 248, 265
Pro-elderly bias, 7, 12, 358, 359, Regional diversity. See Cultural
378, 381, 382, 391, 392. See also diversity
Elderly Bias in Social Spending Regionalism, 202
(EBiSS) Religion, 15, 32, 94–98, 100, 103,
Pro-elderly policy, 6, 17. See also 107–110, 148, 152, 153, 159,
Elderly Bias in Social Spending 176, 186, 202, 221, 263, 296,
(EBiSS) 309, 316, 343, 414, 438, 439
458 INDEX
Religious affiliation, 4, 94, 95, 100, Southeast Asia, 3, 37, 86, 167–169,
101, 107, 153 181, 185, 188
Religious belief, 94, 99, 101 South Korea, 3, 9, 21, 195, 196, 430,
Religious identity, 58, 93 434, 441
Religious institutions, 96, 107 Special Administrative Regions (SAR),
Remittances, 15, 42, 43, 45, 48, 184, 118, 120
259, 437 Stability, regional, 87
Replacement rate, 362, 403, 408 State
Representation, political, 318, 419, creation of the, 33, 35
420 multi-ethnic, 42, 85, 88
Residence transformation of, 31
permanent, 283, 284, 287, 289 State budget, 202, 204, 205, 357
temporary, 283 State capacity, 13, 61, 178, 251, 390
Retirement, 6, 107, 130, 178, 179, States, youthful, 58, 59, 78, 80, 81,
265, 314, 345, 354, 357, 85–87, 250
359–363, 385, 391, 393, 414 Super-size democracy, 141, 430
flexible statutory, 362 Survey, 72, 100, 101, 121, 128, 205,
Retirement age, 123, 179, 180, 188, 208, 211, 230, 231, 291–294,
315, 334, 355, 359–363, 366, 337, 419, 429, 441, 442
383–385, 391 Sweden, 16, 351–354, 356, 360–363,
Revolution. See Conflict, revolutionary 437
Rhetoric, 1, 3, 314, 316, 327, 331,
342–345
anti-immigrant, 41
T
Romania, 17, 59, 374, 376, 379, 382,
Taiwan, 3, 20, 48, 118, 120, 125,
383, 385–388, 390–393
126, 132, 133, 135, 433, 441
Russia, 3, 17, 18, 31, 35, 46, 59, 84,
Teitelbaum, Michael, 2, 7, 29, 61,
401–405, 407–409, 411–414,
340, 414, 420
416–421
Tepe, Markus, 7, 16, 242, 254, 318,
358, 379–381, 383
S Territory, 34, 35, 37, 60, 277, 288,
Sanderson, Warren, 6, 316, 392, 393, 290, 346
419 Tetlock, Philip, 4
Scherbov, Sergei, 6, 316, 392, 393 Toft, Monica Duffy, 5, 7, 29, 30, 49,
Slovenia, 17, 376, 379–382, 384, 187, 220, 433, 439
390, 391 Total fertility rate (TFR), 34, 61, 107,
Sobotka, Tomas, 354, 374, 383, 393 119, 150, 171, 175, 186, 196,
Social class. See Class, social 281, 328, 352, 374, 403, 404,
Social cohesion, 291, 313, 318, 364 407, 431
Social Security, 19, 327, 334, 345, Transnationalism, 15, 40–42, 44–46,
346 49, 221, 235, 415
Social security expenditure, 203 Tunisia, 3, 20, 247–249, 251–268
INDEX 459
U Voter eligibility, 327, 335

Uganda, 3, 5, 19, 20, 221–223, Voters, 7, 17, 19, 155, 175, 199, 200,
225, 226, 229, 230, 233–237, 202, 204, 207, 208, 233, 235,
239–242 297, 335, 336, 338–341, 358,
Ukraine, 3, 17, 18, 58, 84, 401–404, 380, 389, 393, 394, 430, 434,
408–411, 413–421 441
Unequal society. See Inequality Voting behaviour, 46, 231, 232
United States of America (USA), 3, Voting turnout, 13, 155
31, 35, 39, 44, 48, 103, 168,
210, 291, 430–432, 434, 435
Urbanization, 2, 22, 168, 181, W
183–185 Waithood, 20, 248, 252, 257–259
Urdal, Henrik, 5, 9, 16, 33, 58, 61, Weiner, Myron, 2, 29, 58, 61
221, 229, 263, 408, 414 Welfare chauvinism, 365, 393
Welfare state, 6–8, 16, 18, 178, 184,
307, 352, 357–360, 363–366,
V 381–383, 392
Vanhuysse, Pieter, 2, 5–9, 12, 16, 17, support of, 364, 365
142, 169, 183, 187, 200, 220, Wombfare, 433
242, 248, 251, 254, 316–318,
334, 352, 358, 360, 374,
378–384, 390–393, 401, 420, Y
430, 431, 433, 438, 439 Youth/young people, 9, 11–13, 17,
Venezuela, 308, 311 20, 170, 172, 221, 223, 226,
Visa, tourist, 290 227, 234, 238, 241, 242, 247,
Visegrad, 376, 379, 382, 383, 390, 254–268, 382, 419, 433
391 Youth empowerment, 230

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Global Political

“This book is a foundational contribution to establish ‘political demography’.

“This state-of-the-art and original book is much-needed at the present time of

ISBN 978-3-030-73064-2 ISBN 978-3-030-73065-9 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Marina Lohrbach_shutterstock.com

Takeshi Hieda, Eric Kaufmann, Achim Kemmerling, Daniel Lambach,

Goerres, Achim, Vanhuysse, Pieter, Krause, Sebastian and Elis, Jonas

Our children, Hannah, Anna, and Alexander,

Finally, we would like to honour our colleague and friend Dennis

Odense, Denmark Pieter Vanhuysse

1 Introduction: Political Demography as an Analytical

7 Getting Old Before Getting Rich (and not Fully

16 Combating Low Life Expectancy and Low Fertility

Arun Balachandran Department of Sociology, University of Maryland,

Moritz Hess Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, Mönchenglad-

Diego Wachs Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, London School of

Fig. 5 The trend in the number of states engaged in revolutionary

Table 2 Median age of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan in 1990,

Introduction: Political Demography

Pieter Vanhuysse and Achim Goerres

1 Why We Need a Political Demography Lens

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter

© The Author(s) 2021 1

some of the world’s poorest countries still have a population make-up

In addition, to better frame these macro-regional analyses, we also

discourses and policies. Rare, devastating pandemics such as COVID-19

3 Grey Power and Voting: Pro-Elderly

‘gerontocracy’ (Sinn & Uebelmesser, 2002), or ‘pro-elderly bias’ (Tepe

about the political problems that a country or a macro-region was facing

4 Putting the Global Political

varies dramatically, too. Seven countries, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Chad,

a low OADR level in 1990 will see an unprecedented relative rise by a

4.2 International Migration

4.3 Patterns of Covariation Between Population and Political

Source Own computations from Global Political Demography

At the bottom of Table 1, we find a number of demographically very

This short exploratory analysis has revealed a number of striking

5 Globally Crosscutting Themes of Political

6 The ‘Old’ Continent: Is the European

In East Central Europe, a quarter-century-long demographic window

7 The Politics of Routine Mass

8 The Ever-Diverging American Continent

in fertility further increasing population ageing that cannot be compen-

9 The African Continent: Frustrated Youth

10 The Asian Continent:

process could be reached. Most importantly, labour shortage is at the

challenges that occurred in relation to the pension system, the labour

than population ageing, which is due to structural, more slow-moving

Migration in Political Demography: A Review

1 Introduction: The Problem Stated

© The Author(s) 2021 29

The chapter begins by introducing broad historical, geographical and

2 Populations, Migrations and Political

mythology. Implicitly or explicitly, migration is an integral part of the

The role of demography in conflict, with the exception of increasing

3 Migration and the Creation

to be central to the creation of refugees as the new leaders pursued ideas

2 Technically, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951, augmented

4 Migration and the Creation

on newly independent governments, marginal territories were often only

0 conflicts −2.030* −2.025* −3.211* −3.638*

0 conflictsc −2.918* −2.640* −4.243* −4.348*