CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden's recent identification of population growth as one of three top destabilizing trends currently facing the world has received extensive media coverage. The director's comments seem to have taken many by surprise by singling out demographic trends, rather than religious extremism or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as meriting a top spot on the intelligence community's radar screen.
Speaking in the Landon Lecture Series at Kansas State University, the same forum where Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last fall advocated for increasing the use of "soft power," Gen. Hayden highlighted the challenges that will be faced by some of the poorest and weakest states in the world-among them Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Yemen-in providing for the needs of their citizens, particularly young people, in the coming years. The populations of these countries are projected to double and in some cases triple by mid-century, magnifying already heavy demands on health care, education facilities and the job market.
PAI and others have been studying the connections between demographics and security for a number of years. Our 2007 report The Shape of Things to Come: Why Population Age Structure Matters to a Safer, More Equitable World found that 80 percent of all outbreaks of civil conflict between 1970 and 1999 occurred in countries in which at least 60 percent of the population was younger than age 30. These linkages are complex, and PAI does not posit a direct cause and effect relationship between youthful age structures and political instability. However, as Gen. Hayden discussed in his speech, population trends can exacerbate the underlying factors that contribute to conflict and strife, as well as poverty and inequity.
For these reasons, we at PAI were heartened to see Gen. Hayden's recognition of the importance of demographics to a comprehensive assessment of broader trends in security and development. However, absent from his speech was a discussion of the policies that affect population trends, which are very dynamic. Progress toward more balanced age structures occurs when health care improves, leading to lower mortality rates and longer life expectancies, and when fertility rates fall, which happens when women and men have access to the services needed to choose their own family size. Chief among these are rights-based reproductive health care and family planning programs. In countries as diverse as Mexico and Tunisia where these comprehensive programs have been made available, infant mortality and fertility rates today are roughly one-third of their 1975 levels while life expectancies have increased by at least a decade.
Unfortunately, funding for and access to these services is still very limited in many parts of the world. Although Gen. Hayden did not cite it in his speech, Uganda is one of the countries whose population is projected to triple by 2050-and this assumes that women will be having fewer than three children on average, dropping from nearly seven children per woman today. However, recent survey data reveal that 41 percent of women of reproductive age in Uganda have an unmet need for family planning, one of the highest levels in the world. Meanwhile, the annual U.S. contribution to international family planning programs lags far behind global needs. If Gen. Hayden and other government officials are serious about viewing population as a factor in international security, their response should start with better funding and policies for family planning and reproductive health.
This article originally appeared at the Population Action International Blog.
