Youth Bulges and Civil Conflict

AuthorMatthias Flückiger,Markus Ludwig
DOI10.1177/0022002717707303
Date01 October 2018
Published date01 October 2018
Subject MatterArticles
Article
Youth Bulges and Civil
Conflict: Causal
Evidence from
Sub-Saharan Africa
Matthias Flu
¨ckiger
1,2
, and Markus Ludwig
3
Abstract
The presence of an exceptionally large youth population, that is, a youth bulge, is
often associated with an elevated risk of civil conflict. In this article, we develop an
instrumental variable approach in which the size of the youth cohorts in Sub-Saharan
Africa is identified using variation in birth-year drought incidence. Our results show
that an increase in the size of the population group aged fifteen to nineteen raises the
risk of low-intensity conflict. A 1 percent inc rease in the size of this age-group
augments the likelihood of civil conflict incidence (onset) by 2.3 (1.2) percentage
points. On the other hand, we do not find any association between the size of the
two adjacent youth cohorts, that is, the population groups aged ten to fourteen and
twenty to twenty-four.
Keywords
civil conflict, youth bulge, drought, instrumental variable regression
Introduction
Civil conflicts and the accompanying violence not only inflict severe human suffer-
ing but also represent a main impediment to economic development. While the
1
Queen’s Management School, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2
Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
3
Faculty of Law, Business and Economics, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany
Corresponding Author:
Matthias Flu¨ckiger, Queen’s Management School, Queen’s University Belfast, Riddel Hall, 185 Stranmillis
Road, Belfast BT9 5EE, Northern Ireland.
Email: matthias.flueckiger@qub.ac.uk
Journal of Conflict Resolution
2018, Vol. 62(9) 1932-1962
ªThe Author(s) 2017
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0022002717707303
journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr
consequences of civil wars are undoubtedly devastating, the discussion regarding
their causes is controversial. Highly disputed, for example, is the existence of a link
between large youth cohorts and the risk of civil conflict, that is, the existence of a
youth bulge effect. While prominent theoretical arguments of Goldstone (1991) and
Goldstone (2010) as well as empirical studies of Urdal (2006) and Collier, Hoeffler,
and Rohner (2009) suggest the existence of a positive association between youth
bulges and the likelihood of conflict, the youth bulge hypothesis is contested by
Fearon (2011) and Sommers (2011). These contradicting findings reflect the chal-
lenges associated with the identification of youth bulge effects. Reverse causality,
for instance, constitutes a major issue. While civil conflicts could be caused by an
unusually large youth cohort, they also reduce the size of the cohort by increasing
mortality and displacement (Murray et al. 2002; United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees [UNHCR] 2010). In this article, we develop an instrumental variable
approach for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to overcome these issues.
For the subsequent analysis, we define the term “youth” to encompass the ages
ten to twenty-four. The available population data are grouped into five-year age bins
which implies that three age-groups—namely, the population aged ten to fourteen,
fifteen to nineteen, and twenty to twenty-four—fall within this youth definition. We
characterize the size of these three youth age-groups by their respective absolute
size. More specifically, we use time-detrended values thereof. This measure is trend
stationary and consequently captures transitory shocks in the cohort size, that is,
deviations from the country-specific trend. We identify fluctuations in the youth
population sizes using variation in the drought incidence in the birth years of the
respective age-groups. We show that these birth-year drought shocks induce varia-
tion in the size of their respective age-groups but do not possess explanatory power
for adjacent groups. This allows for a clean separation of the effects of different age-
groups on conflict within a single regression equation. The argument underlying the
drought–population relationship is that drought episodes affect agricultural output
and income in the rainfed farming systems of SSA. This, in turn, influences infant
health and survival. We therefore argue, and empirically document, that variation in
birth-year drought incidence constitutes a valid instrument for cohort sizes. This
allows us to analyze and isolate the effect of the population size of each youth age-
group, that is, the age-groups ten to fourteen, fifteen to nineteen, and twenty to
twenty-four, on the risk of civil conflict.
Our country-level drought measure—which can be interpreted as the share of the
landmass in drought during the growing season—is based on the standardized pre-
cipitation–evapotranspiration index (SPEI) developed in Vicente-Serrano et al.
(2010). This index represents a multiscalar drought measure which takes into
account that drought conditions not only depend on precipitation alone but are also
affected by temperature and soil conditions. For our empirical analysis, we combine
the population from the World Population Prospects and the drought data with the
Uppsala/PRIO data set on civil conflicts (Gleditsch et al. 2002). Our sample com-
prises the countries of SSA and spans the period 1960–2010.
Flu
¨ckiger and Ludwig 1933

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT