AT
no point in recorded history has our world been so demographically
lopsided, with old people concentrated in rich countries and the young
in not-so-rich countries.
Much
has been made of the challenges of aging societies. But it’s the youth
bulge that stands to put greater pressure on the global economy, sow
political unrest, spur mass migration and have profound consequences for
everything from marriage to Internet access to the growth of cities.
The parable of our time might well be: Mind your young, or they will trouble you in your old age.
A fourth of humanity is now young (ages 10 to 24). The vast majority live in the developing world, according to the United Nations Population Fund.
Nowhere
can the pressures of the youth bulge be felt as profoundly as in India.
Every month, some one million young Indians turn 18 — coming of age,
looking for work, registering to vote and making India home to the
largest number of young, working-age people anywhere in the world.
Already, the number of Indians between the ages of 15 and 34 — 422 million — is roughly the same as the combined populations of the United States, Canada and Britain.
By
and large, today’s global youth are more likely to be in school than
their parents were; they are more connected to the world than any
generation before them; and they are in turn more ambitious, which also
makes them more prone to getting fed up with what their elders have to
offer. Many are in no position to land a decent job at home. And
millions are moving, from country to city, and to cities in faraway
countries, where they are increasingly unwelcome.
Democratically
elected presidents and potentates are equally aware: Aspirations, when
thwarted, can be a potent, spiteful force. No longer can you be sure
that a large swell of young working-age people will enrich your country,
as they did a generation ago in East Asia. “You can’t just say, ‘Hey
look, I’ve got a youth bulge, it’s going to be great,’ ” said Charles J.
Kenny, an economist at the Washington-based Center for Global
Development. “You’ve got to have an economy ready to respond.”
“It is the big development challenge these countries face — more decent jobs,” he added.
A
case in point are the caste protests that paralyzed a prospering North
Indian state in recent weeks. They were driven by a powerful landowning
caste whose sons can neither support themselves through farming nor
secure the jobs of their choice. So the protesters took to the streets
demanding caste-based quotas for government posts. They blocked rail
lines and set trucks on fire; the police say 30 people died in the
unrest.
This
is just part of India’s staggering challenge. Every year, the country
must create an estimated 12 million to 17 million jobs.
Worldwide,
young workers are in precarious straits. Two out of five are either not
working or working in such ill-paid jobs that they can’t escape
poverty, according to figures recently released by the International Labour Organization.
In the developing world, where few can afford to be unemployed, most
young workers have jobs that are sporadic, poorly paid and offer no
legal protection; women are worse off.
Youth
unemployment is especially striking in richer countries. Across Europe,
youth unemployment is 25 percent, not just because of a sluggish
economy but because many young Europeans don’t have the skills for the
jobs available, from electricians to home health aides; it explains in
part the surge of anti-immigrant sentiment on the Continent. In the
United States, nearly 17 percent of those between the ages of 16 and 29
are neither in school nor working.
That
does not bode well. An increase in youth unemployment is a better
predictor of social unrest than virtually any other factor, warned
Raymond Torres, the Labour Organization’s research chief. “The social
contract is weakened because of unfulfilled promises,” he said.
In
some ways, the global demographic portrait reflects what we are doing
right: Our babies are far less likely to die, and our grandparents live
longer. Women have fewer children, and die less often in childbirth.
More good news: Primary school enrollment has shot up in the developing
world. In India, for instance, nearly all children are enrolled in
school.
But even those gains are uneven. According to the latest survey
carried out by a national nonprofit called Pratham, half of Indian
schoolchildren enrolled in fifth grade are unable to read from a
second-grade textbook, and half cannot subtract. They’re in school, but
they are not learning much.
What’s
more, even modest education fuels ambition. Yet it can also frustrate
those who can’t find work. Across the Middle East, where authoritarian
rulers invested in education, youth unemployment is soaring — along with
unrest.
The global generation gap is widening. In Germany, the median age
is over 46, and in Russia, 39. In the United States, the median age is
over 37; in India, 27; and in Nigeria, just over 18. China is running
out of young workers so fast that it ended its decades-old one-child policy last year to allow married couples to have two children.
The
worldwide age divide makes migration — along with job creation in the
global south — critical to balancing the world demographically,
according to Rainer Münz,
head of research and development at the Erste Group Bank in Brussels.
Mr. Münz proposes what he calls a system of “demographic arbitrage,”
with industrialized countries competing for talent from elsewhere. Even
China, he maintains, will have to enter that race.
“A
demographic arbitrage between aging societies with a shrinking work
force and youthful societies would be good thing, if the whole thing
could be managed,” he said.
Many
politicians are making the opposite case. Just last week, Donald Tusk,
the president of the European Council, told migrants not to come to
Europe, which has sought to stanch the flow by offering development aid
to the migrants’ home countries.
YET
development aid can’t tamp down dreams. As poor countries prosper and
their young become more educated, they are more likely to migrate. It
explains in part why India has the largest diaspora in the world: In 2015, 16 million Indians were living outside India, double the number in 2000.
Perhaps most worrisome for some societies is the bachelor gap.
In
China, where girls have been systematically culled from the population,
there were 34 million extra men in 2010, according to census data. In
India, there are 17 million more men and boys
between the ages of 10 and 24. That makes the marriage market even more
competitive, which puts a man without a good job at a major
disadvantage. Many are bound to be bachelors for life — a potent formula
for violence, some scholars say, especially against women.
Little
surprise then that the recent caste protests in India took place in
Haryana, the state with the sharpest gender imbalance in the nation,
with 879 women for every 1,000 men in the population. This lopsidedness
stems from a disdain for daughters. Technology and rising incomes have
allowed expecting couples to pay for illegal sex determination tests,
and female fetuses are often aborted. A result is a surplus of young
men, making it necessary to import brides from other parts of the
country.
And so the parable of our times may really be: Mind your daughters, or your future will come to ruin.
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