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A population pyramid, also called an age structure diagram, is a graphical illustration that shows the distribution of various age groups in a population (typically that of a country or region of the world), which forms the shape of a pyramid when the population is growing. It is also used in Ecology to determine the overall age distribution of a population; an indication of the reproductive capabilities and likelihood of the continuation of a species.

It typically consists of two back-to-back bar graphs, with the population plotted on the X-axis and age on the Y-axis, one showing the number of males and one showing females in a particular population in five-year age groups (also called cohorts). Males are conventionally shown on the left and females on the right, and they may be measured by raw number or as a percentage of the total population.

Population pyramids are often viewed as the most effective way to graphically depict the age and sex distribution of a population, partly because of the very clear image these pyramids present.^[1]

A great deal of information about the population broken down by age and sex can be read from a population pyramid, and this can shed light on the extent of development and other aspects of the population. A population pyramid also tells how many people of each age range live in the area. There tends to be more females than males in the older age groups, due to females' longer life expectancy.

A helpful analogy to facilitate understanding population pyramids is that just as a builder employs a blueprint for showing a house's structure, demographers and geographers employ population pyramids as a blueprint for showing population dynamics.^[2]

Types of population pyramid[link]

Population pyramids for 4 stages of the demographic transition model

While all countries' population pyramids differ, four general types have been identified by the fertility and mortality rates of a country.

Stable pyramid

A population pyramid showing an unchanging pattern of fertility and mortality.

Stationary pyramid

A population pyramid typical of countries with low fertility and low mortality, very similar to a constrictive pyramid.

Expansive pyramid

A population pyramid showing a broad base, indicating a high proportion of children, a rapid rate of population growth, and a low proportion of older people. This wide base indicates a large number of children. A steady upwards narrowing shows that more people die at each higher age band. This type of pyramid indicates a population in which there is a high birth rate, a high death rate and a short life expectancy. This is the typical pattern for less economically developed countries, due to little access to and incentive to use birth control, negative environmental factors (for example, lack of clean water) and poor access to health care.

Constrictive pyramid

A population pyramid showing lower numbers or percentages of younger people. The country will have a greying population which means that people are generally older, as the country has long life expectancy, a low death rate, but also a low birth rate. This pyramid has been occurring more frequently, especially when immigrants are factored out, and is often a typical pattern for a very developed country, a high over-all education and easy access and incentive to use birth control, good health care and few or no negative environmental factors.

Youth bulge[link]

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Median age by country. A youth bulge is evident for Africa, and to a lesser extent for South and Southeast Asia and Central America.

A world map showing countries by fertility rate, according to the CIA World Factbook's 2012 data.

7-8 Children   6-7 Children   5-6 Children   4-5 Children

3-4 Children   2-3 Children   1-2 Children   0-1 Children

The expansive case was described as youth bulge by Gary Fuller (1995). Gunnar Heinsohn (2003) argues that an excess in especially young adult male population predictably leads to social unrest, war and terrorism, as the "third and fourth sons" that find no prestigious positions in their existing societies rationalize their impetus to compete by religion or political ideology.

Heinsohn claims that most historical periods of social unrest lacking external triggers (such as rapid climatic changes or other catastrophic changes of the environment) and most genocides can be readily explained as a result of a built-up youth bulge, including European colonialism, 20th-century fascism, rise of Communism during the Cold War, and ongoing conflicts such as that in Darfur and terrorism.^{[citation needed]} This factor has been also used to account for the Arab spring events.^[3] Economic recessions, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Late 2000's recession, are also claimed to be explained in part due to a large youth population who cannot find jobs.^[4]

One problem with this line of reasoning is that under conditions prevailing before the introduction of modern medicine, death rates were much higher than they are now, and almost all societies had youth bulges even when their population growth rate was negligible. However, they certainly did not experience such youth bulge as prevails today in some parts of the world or as prevailed in twentieth century Germany or in Africa and the Middle East nowadays.^{[original research?]}

It is not just that most periods of unrest occurred in societies with youth bulges, but that some of the pre-modern periods of any sort existed in societies with such bulges as well. Nevertheless, since the improvement of medicine and its introduction, the element of youth bulge has become far more salient than before. Therefore, perhaps it cannot explain massacres throughout human history, but it can serve as rather plausible theory to explain the terror^[vague], social unrest, and uprisings in today's society.^[5]

Another problem is that it ignores the social consequences of poverty, corruption and mass unemployment among young males in developing countries, where most of the world's current population growth is occurring. The "youth bulge" is not an accurate predictor of social unrest, war and terrorism, because they are the product of far more complicated and interrelated set of factors, of which demographics only plays a part. Yet, even when there are other factors and circumstance to enable mass unrest, a youth bulge is likely to be one of them.^[5]

Youth bulge theory represents one of the most recently developed theories of war and social unrest,^[5] and has become highly influential on U.S. foreign policy as two major U.S. proponents of the theory, political scientists Jack Goldstone and Gary Fuller,^[6][7] have acted as consultants to the U.S. government.^{[citation needed]}

A large population of adolescents entering the labor force and electorate strains at the seams of the economy and polity, which were designed for smaller populations. This creates unemployment and alienation unless new opportunities are created quickly enough - in which case a 'demographic dividend' accrues because productive workers outweigh young and elderly dependants. Yet the 16-30 age range is associated with risk-taking, especially among males. In general, youth bulges in developing countries are associated with higher unemployment and, as a result, a heightened risk of violence and political instability. ^[8] For Cincotta and Doces (2011), the transition to more mature age structures is almost a sine qua non for democratization. ^[9]

Many countries with the largest youth bulge are African nations severely afflicted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has decreased overall lifespan dramatically. As of 2012, the largest youth bulge is found in Zimbabwe, which has a population structure with 56.57% between the ages of 15 and 29.^[10]

• 

  Afghanistan shows a classic youth bulge.

• 

  Angola shows the same, even more pronounced.

• 

  China had an extreme youth bulge until the 1960s, when it sharply curbed partly as an effect of the one-child policy.

• 

  Population pyramid of Egypt in 2005. Many of those 30 and younger are educated citizens who are experiencing difficulty finding work.

• 

  Nearly half of Libya's 2011 population consists of youths under age 20.

The Middle East and North Africa[link]

The Middle East and North Africa are currently experiencing a prominent youth bulge. Structural changes in service provision, especially health care, beginning in the 1960s created the conditions for a population explosion, which has resulted in a population consisting primarily of younger people. It is estimated that around 65% of the regional population is under the age of 30.^[11]

The Middle East has invested more in education, including religious education, than most other regions such that education is available to most young people.^[12] However, that education has not led to higher levels of employment, and youth unemployment is currently at 25%, the highest of any single region.^[13] Of this 25%, over half are first time entrants into the job market.^[14]

The youth bulge in the Middle East and North Africa has been favorably compared to that of East Asia, which harnessed this human capital and saw huge economic growth in recent decades.^[15] The youth bulge has been referred to by the Middle East Youth Initiative as a demographic gift, which, if engaged, could fuel regional economic growth and development.^[16]

Egypt's socio-economic challenges[link]

A poor neighbourhood in Cairo.

^{[citation needed]}

The population of Egypt grew from 30,083,419 in 1966^[17] to roughly 79,000,000 by 2008.^[18] The vast majority of Egyptians live in the limited spaces near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found and competing with the need of human habitations. In late 2010, around 40 percent of Egypt's population of just under 80 million lived on the fiscal income equivalent of roughly US$2 per day with a large part of the population relying on subsidised goods.^[19]

The "Day of Revolt" on 25 January, 2011 in Cairo.

According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics and other proponets of demographic structural approach (cliodynamics), the basic problem Egypt has is unemployment driven by a demographic youth bulge: with the number of new people entering the job force at about 4% a year, unemployment in Egypt is almost 10 times as high for college graduates as it is for people who have gone through elementary school, particularly educated urban youth, who are precisely those people that were seen out in the streets during 2011 Egyptian revolution.^{[20] [21]}

This is in stark contrast to others like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, who are actively trying to engage and utilize their youth bulge, or Algeria and Morocco, which have tried to mitigate the worst effects of a disenfanchised and disillusioned youth.

Uses of population pyramids[link]

Population pyramids can be used to find the number of economic dependents being supported in a particular population. Economic dependents are defined as those under 15 (children who are in full time education and therefore unable to work) and those over 65 (those who have the option of being retired). In some less developed countries children start work well before the age of 15, and in some developed countries it is common to not start work until 30 (like in the North European countries), and people may work beyond the age of 65, or retire early. Therefore, the definition provides an approximation. In many countries, the government plans the economy in such a way that the working population can support these dependents. This number can be further used to calculate the dependency ratio in that population.

Population pyramids can be used to observe the natural increase, birth, and death rate.

See also[link]

• Age class structure
• Baby boom
• Demographic transition
• Gender imbalance
• Population
• Population growth
• Political demography
• Demographic analysis
• Middle East Youth Initiative
• Waithood
• List of countries by median age
• Overpopulation

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Gary Fuller, "The Youth Crisis in Middle Eastern Society" (2004) download
• Gary Fuller, The Demographic Backdrop to Ethnic Conflict: A Geographic Overview, was born in 1989 and was produced by Edward Gewin: The Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990s, Washington: CIA (RTT 95-10039, October), 151-154.
• Heinsohn, Gunnar (2003). Söhne und Weltmacht : Terror im Aufstieg und Fall der Nationen. Zürich: Orell Füssli. ISBN 3-280-06008-7.  (German)
• Navtej Dhillon, "Middle East Youth Bulge: Challenge or Opportunity?" (2008) The Brookings Institution
• "From Oil Boom to Youth Boon: Tapping the Middle East Demographic Gift" (2008) The Brookings Institution
• Graham Fuller, "The Youth Factor: The New Demographics of the Middle East and the Implications for U.S. Policy" (2003) The Brookings Institution
• The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict after the Cold War
• The "Youth Bulge" (zmag.org)
• The Shape of Things to Come, Why Age Structure Matters To A Safer, More Equitable World
• Political Demography: identity, conflict and institutions ed. J. A. Goldstone, E. Kaufmann and M. Toft. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Population pyramids

• U.S. Census Bureau, International Statistical Agencies
• U.S. Census Bureau, International Database (IDB)
• U.S. Census Bureau, US National Population Projections, Population Pyramids
• United Nations Data Set Population pyramids from 1950 to 2050
• Canadian site with animations for different types of pyramids
• Australian animated population pyramids, Australian Bureau of Statistics
• Interactive population pyramids of metropolitan France 1901-2060 (INSEE)
• China, Europe, USA: Population by Age and Sex, 1950-2050. Moving Age Pyramids.
• US Census Bureau, Population age structure in an interactive Excel dashboard
• Animation: a different approach to population pyramids using Excel
• A discussion on population pyramids as a data visualization tool

Martin Seth Kramer (b. September 9, 1954, Washington, D.C.) is an American scholar of the Middle East at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Shalem Center. His focus is on Islam and Arab politics.

Education[link]

Kramer began his undergraduate degree under Itamar Rabinovich in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University and completed his B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. at Princeton as well, under Fouad Ajami, L. Carl Brown, the late Charles Issawi, and Bernard Lewis, who directed his thesis. He also received a History M.A. from Columbia University.^[1]

• Tel Aviv University, 1971-73 – Middle Eastern Studies
• B.A. Princeton University, 1975 (summa cum laude) – Near Eastern Studies
• M.A. Columbia University, 1976 – History
• M.A. Princeton University, 1978 – Near Eastern Studies
• Ph.D. Princeton University, 1982 – Near Eastern Studies^[2]

Career[link]

Martin Kramer is the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. In 2009 Kramer was appointed President-designate of Shalem College.^[3]

During a 25-year career at Tel Aviv University, Kramer directed the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies; taught as a visiting professor at Brandeis University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, and Georgetown University; and served twice as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He is a past editor of the Middle East Forum's Middle East Quarterly.

Political involvement[link]

Kramer was an early advocate of attacking Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11, arguing in December 2001 that regardless of a possible involvement, he posed a threat to the entire Middle East.^[4] However, he was critical of the shifting rationale for the war in October 2002, questioning the United States' "tools of social engineering" needed to promote an eventual democracy process in the Arab world.^[5]

He was a senior policy adviser on the Middle East to the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Campaign.^{[citation needed]}

Critique of Middle Eastern Studies[link]

[edit] Ivory Towers on Sand

In 2001, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published Kramer's book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (download). The work criticizes Middle Eastern Studies in the United States for what Kramer argues is a systematic left-wing bias backed with poor scholarship.^[6]

Palestinian aid controversy[link]

At the February 2010 Herzliya Conference in Israel, Kramer caused controversy in a speech in which he advocated cuts in what he termed "pro-natal subsidies" to Palestinians in Gaza as a means of discouraging population growth, thus curbing Islamic radicalization.^[7][8] At the time, he was a National Security Studies Program Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and some critics called on Harvard to distance itself from him. Deans at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs rejected these calls, stating, "Accusations have been made that Martin Kramer's statements are genocidal. These accusations are baseless." They found that Kramer's critics "appear not to understand the role of controversy in an academic setting" and rejected any attempts to restrict "fundamental academic freedom."^[9]

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

• Political Islam (1980) ISBN 0-8039-1435-0
• Islam Assembled (1985) ISBN 0-231-05994-9
• Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution (1987) ISBN 0-8133-0453-9
• Hezbollah's Vision of the West (1989) ISBN 0-944029-01-9
• Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East) (1991) ISBN 0-8156-2548-0
• Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (1996) ISBN 1-56000-272-7
• The Islamism Debate (1997) ISBN 965-224-024-9
• The Jewish Discovery of Islam (1999) ISBN 965-224-040-0
• Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) ISBN 0-944029-49-3, download

Journal Papers[link]

• The American Interest Azure magazine, Autumn 2006.
• Nation and Assassination in the Middle East, Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004.
• Coming to Terms: Fundamentalists or Islamists?, Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2003.
• Policy and the Academy: An Illicit Relationship?, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2003.

Kramer on American scholars of the Middle East[link]

• Pape-Kramer debate - a debate involving Robert Pape and Kramer
• Suicide Terrorism in the Middle East: Origins and Response Robert Pape
• Islam Obscured, Kramer on John Esposito
• Stephen Walt's World, a critique of Stephen Walt
• The Arab Nation of Shakib Arslan by Kramer, a critique of Shakib Arslan 31 October 1987
• Albert Pasha: criticism of Albert Hourani by Kramer 15 June 2002
• Islamist Bubbles, an assessment of Gilles Kepel.
• Arab Pen, English Purse: John Sabunji and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, a critique of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt by Kramer 31 December 1989
• Ignatieff's Empire, criticism of Michael Ignatieff January 5, 2003
• The Day the Rabbi Rescued Rashid, a critique of Arthur Hertzberg 28 February 2005

Kramer on Key Middle Eastern Figures[link]

• The Oracle of Hizbullah (Hezbollah): Sayyid Muhammad Husayn (Hussein) Fadlallah

Kramer on Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies[link]

• What Do the Financial Crisis and US Middle East Policy Have in Common? December 2008.
• Battling Toward the Collapse of the Hamas Regime January 2009.
• Sanctioning "Resistance" January 2009.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Martin Kramer's website
• Martin Kramer's blog
• Kramer's entry with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
• Kramer about Obama and the Middle East

House with Vladimir Putin in 2002.

Karen Elliott House is a journalist and former executive at the Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones. She served as President of Dow Jones International and then publisher of the WSJ before her retirement in the spring of 2006.

A native of Matador, Texas, House received a bachelors in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was editor of the university's newspaper, The Daily Texan. She was also a member of Orange Jackets, an honorary organization for women at UT. In 1984 House was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for her coverage of the Middle East while a reporter with the Wall Street Journal. The prize was awarded for a series of interviews with Jordan's King Hussein, which anticipated the problems Ronald Reagan's Middle East peace plan would face. She is also the recipient of the Overseas Press Club's Bob Considine Award for best daily newspaper interpretation of foreign affairs (1984 and 1988); the University of Southern California's Distinguished Achievement in Journalism Award (1983); Georgetown University's Edward Weintal Award for distinguished coverage of American foreign policy (1980); and the National Press Club's Edwin M. Hood Award for Excellence in Diplomatic Reporting (1982).

House joined the Journal as a reporter in 1974. She was named assistant foreign editor in 1983; foreign editor in 1984; vice-president of the Dow Jones International Group; and president of the International Group in 1995. In 2002 she was appointed publisher by the board of Dow Jones. As publisher she was the architect of the Journal's Weekend Edition, among other ambitious and often controversial projects. At the Journal, House worked under her husband, Peter R. Kann,^[1] Dow Jones CEO and chairman of the board from 1992 until 2006.

In February 2007, House wrote a series of articles for the WSJ following a month-long tour of Saudi Arabia.

House is a board member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and Boston University. She is serving as the Vice Chairman on the board of trustees for RAND Corporation.

References[link]

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