It started in Tunisia, when protesters took to the streets and ousted long-time president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The protests then spread to Egypt, occupying Tahrir Square in Cairo until President Hosni Mubarak resigned.
Now regimes from Libya to Bahrain are threatened with protests that seek to oust them from power.
To the casual observer, these protests seemed to come out of nowhere, bringing an existential threat to regimes that appeared stable. But those who looked closely have been warning of unrest for the past decade, due to a common factor that is transforming the Middle East: the youth bulge.
A youth bulge occurs when young people form a larger proportion of the population than all other groups combined.
According to a 2010 report from the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, one in every three people in the Middle East and North Africa is between the ages of 10 and 24. In Yemen, a country facing civil war, the median age is 17. In Egypt, the median age is 24. In Tunisia, 42 per cent of the population is under 25.
The youth bulge in the Middle East is a result of two demographic trends: increased prosperity, as well as cultural and political factors, kept birth rates high, while infant and child mortality plummeted. Although the birth rate is now falling, it didn’t fall fast enough to prevent a baby boom larger and younger than that of the United States in the turbulent 1960s.
A youth bulge does not automatically lead to unrest, but tends to when youth are not effectively integrated into society and lack access to jobs, education and marriage.
A 2003 report by Graham Fuller of the Brookings Institution argues that rapid population growth can be an engine of economic growth – but also can lead to falling wages and rising unemployment.
While America’s baby boom was able to share in the prosperity and economic growth that followed the Second World War, the youth of the Middle East struggle with high unemployment and unresponsive political institutions. Failing to provide economic opportunities for youth, particularly the educated ones who won’t settle for low-status jobs, can be a time bomb.
Fuller points to the historical example of Europe’s youth bulge that occurred after the Black Death in the Middle Ages. England and Spain sent their youths overseas to colonize the Americas, growing wealthy as a result. Germany kept its youths at home, suffering the turmoil of the Reformation and the wars that followed.
The current protests underline what demographers have been telling policy makers for over a decade: ignore the young at your peril.
The youth bulge means that even less repressive regimes such as Jordan, or wealthy ones such as Saudi Arabia need to find a way to accommodate youth. This can come through greater liberalization of politics and the economy, as well as more education and job opportunities. However, doing nothing is not an option.
The protests may not unseat every authoritarian regime in the region, and democracy is hardly an inevitable result.
But the protests do mean the end of “business as usual” when it comes to accommodating the pressures and expectations of a massive youth population. Middle Eastern regimes will face further protests, riots and even civil war if they fail to meet the challenge of the youth bulge.