Conflicts Demography and the Economic Volatility in Developing Countries

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Economics - Economic Cycle and Growth grade: 10 Humboldt-University of Berlin (Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät) language: English abstract: In cities in six West African countries I saw similar young men everywhere--hordes of them. They were like loose molecules in a very unstable social fluid a fluid that was clearly on the verge of igniting. (Kaplan 1994)With his article The Coming Anarchy Kaplan ignited a discussion over the threat posed by youth cohorts to the civilized world. More than 15 years later there is still no clear evidence whether large populations of young men are a main factor in determining conflict risk or not. This paper now tries to connect the topic of demographically induced violence with another contemporary topic of development economics: growth volatility.