Youth Cohort Size, Structural Socioeconomic Conditions, and Youth Protest Behavior in Democratic Societies (1995–2014)

Abstract

Conventional literature associates large youth cohort size (YCS) with increased risk of political violence in countries with such demographic profiles. Key questions which remain unanswered, however, are whether YCS is also associated with young people’s proclivities toward more peaceful forms of protests, and whether structural socioeconomic conditions influence such a relationship? Using multilevel binary logistic regression techniques on pooled individual level data for 51 democratic countries purposively sampled from World Values Survey Waves 3 to 6, and country level data from World Bank, and UN Population Division, I show that YCS demonstrates a positive relationship with young people’s participation in peaceful demonstrations. This relationship is, however, moderated by structural factors such as education and unemployment, which end up reducing young people’s likelihood of participation. I argue that resource limitation, as predicted by the Civic Voluntarism Model, better explains the relationship between YCS and individual youth protest behavior in democratic societies, more than socioeconomic grievance, as suggested by grievance theory. An important implication of this finding is that participation in elite-challenging behaviors such as peaceful protests, can be expected to be more common among young people in affluent democratic societies, than their peers elsewhere in the democratic world.

Anti-democratic youth? The influence of youth cohort size and quality of democracy on young people’s support for democracy

“…We operationalised the YCS of countries as the proportion of persons aged 15-29 years within the adult population of a country (15 years and above). The 15-29 years range adequately captured our group of both theoretical and empirical interest, compared with other estimates which have much lower upper cut-off points, such as the 15-24 years (See Korotayev et al, 2022;Nkansah, 2022;Weber, 2019). Since the World Population Report database estimates within 5-year intervals, we calculated and applied the YCS estimates for countries to the respective WVS Waves which fell within the population years.…”

Young People’s Demography in Democracy: The Effect of Youth Cohort Size on Youth Political Attitudes and Behaviors in Democratic Societies (1995-2020)

“…We operationalized the YCS of countries as the proportion of persons aged 15-29 years within the adult population of a country (15 years and above). The 15-29 years range adequately captured our group of both theoretical and empirical interest, compared with other estimates which have much lower upper cut-off points, such as the 15-24 years (Weber, 2019;Korotayev et al, 2022;Nkansah, 2022). Since the World Population Report database estimates within 5-year intervals, we calculated and applied the YCS estimates for countries to the respective WVS Waves which fell within the population years.…”