Socioeconomic Roots of Middle East Radicalism

26 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW
Populations will continue to grow despite falling fertility rates because fertility
remains well above replacement levels and because, as a result of past population
growth, many women will soon enter childbearing years (“demographic
momentum”). Many countries in the region will experience a considerable rise
in their population during the next fifteen years (figure 1). The population may
reach roughly six hundred million by 2025, some six times greater than the
1950s. Such growth poses numerous economic challenges, from food and water
to jobs and housing.
FIGURE 1
GROWTH IN POPULATION FROM 2000 TO 2015
North
Atlantic
Ocean
Morocco
26%
Algeria
26%
Tunisia
16%
Mediterranean Sea
Lebanon 19%
Israel 20%
West Bank 55%
Gaza Strip 72%
Libya
39% Egypt
25%
Total Population 2000 2015
Algeria........................................................
31,194,000
a
Bahrain............................................................
406,000
39,281,000
533,000
Egypt ......................................................... 68,360,000
Gaza Strip.....................................................
1,132,000
Iran ............................................................. 65,620,000
Iraq.............................................................
22,676,000
Israel............................................................
5,842,000
Jordan.........................................................
4,999,000
a
Kuwait.............................................................
814,000
85,219,000
1,945,000
79,172,000
33,316,000
6,992,000
7,199,000
1,218,000
Lebanon.......................................................
3,578,000
Libya.............................................................
5,115,000
Morocco.....................................................
30,122,000
a
Oman............................................................
1,961,000
4,252,000
7,115,000
37,832,000
3,507,000
a
Qatar................................................................
168,000 314,000
a
Saudi Arabia..............................................
15,879,000 24,789,000
Syria...........................................................
16,304,000
Tunisia ......................................................... 9,593,000
a
United Arab Emirates......................................
793,000
22,697,000
11,174,000
1,237,000
West Bank....................................................
2,020,000
Yemen.........................................................
17,479,000
3,128,000
29,165,000
Total for Middle East 304,055,000 400,085,000
a
Population numbers for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states
exclude the noncitizen population. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census
Syria
39% Iraq
47%
Jordan 44%
Red
Sea
Bahrain
31%
Caspian
Sea
Kuwait 50%
Saudi Arabia
56%
Yemen
67%
Gulf of Aden
Iran
21%
Qatar
87%
U.A.E Oman
56% 78%
Arabian
Sea
Percent Change
Over 50
31 to 50
21 to 30
16 to 20
Total growth for the
Middle East is 32 percent.
Several implications follow from this demographic pattern. First, and most
important, is that the majority of those in the Middle East are young—half the
Arab population, 54 percent of Iranians, and 52 percent of Pakistanis are younger
than twenty years old (table 2). (By contrast, only slightly more than
one-quarter of the populations of developed countries—the United States, European
Union, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan—are under twenty.)
Two-thirds of the people in the region are under thirty. It is not likely that this
picture will change markedly in the next generation. By 2025 the number of people
aged fourteen or younger will roughly double; in that year, about two out