Youth Bulge theory: Why there won’t be an Uprising in Russia

Many wonder why there are so few protests in Russia over the brutal war against Ukraine. An answer could lie in the youth bulge theory which we will use again to explain the relative lethargy of the Russian populace, so read on!

Since the beginning of the war against Ukraine observers have wondered why there isn’t more political unrest in Russia, i.e. more criticism, more protests, and more opposition in general to this unjust war against its peaceful neighbour.

Several reasons come to mind like police brutality against protestors, long prison sentences for members of the opposition, and constant brainwashing with propaganda but there could be one hidden force: the proportion of young people.

In this post, we won’t retell the whole background story of the youth bulge theory because we have done that already here: The “Youth Bulge” of Afghanistan: The Hidden Force behind Political Instability.

The gist is that the bigger the proportion of young people over older people is, the more violent political and social conflicts there will be. In the above post, we showed a highly significant correlation between those two based on World Bank data. On top of that, we found a tipping point at about 24% for the age group 0-14.

Now, let us see how the situation in Russia is based on the latest 2020-numbers:

library(WDI)
age0_14 <- WDI(indicator = "SP.POP.0014.TO.ZS", start = 2020, end = 2020) # proportion of 0-14 year olds 
pol_stab <- WDI(indicator = "PV.EST", start = 2020, end = 2020) # political stability indicator

data <- merge(age0_14, pol_stab)[c(2, 4, 5)] |> na.omit()
colnames(data) <- c("country", "age0_14", "pol_stab")

plot(data$age0_14, data$pol_stab, col = "darkgrey", xlab = "Proportion of young people (in %)", ylab = "Political stability", main = "Youth bulge theory")
abline(v = 23.9, col = "red")
lm.out <- lm(pol_stab ~ age0_14, data = data) 
abline(lm.out, col = "blue", lwd = 3)

country <- "Russian Federation"
points(data$age0_14[data$country == country], data$pol_stab[data$country == country], col = "red", lwd = 8)
text(data$age0_14[data$country == country], data$pol_stab[data$country == country], labels = country, pos = 4)

As we can clearly see in this plot the proportion of 0–14-year-olds with about 18% is way below the critical tipping point of 24% (= the narrow red line). That alone of course doesn’t give a “guarantee” that there won’t be any serious uprising or revolution but it can provide a good heuristic with about 80% accuracy.

What do you think about the youth bulge theory in this context? Please let us know in the comments!