Population Age Structure and the Vulnerability of States to Coups d’État

This essay responds to recent critiques of the U.S. State Department’s inconsistent application of congressionally mandated foreign-aid restrictions following several successful coups d’état in countries receiving USAID foreign assistance. This demographic analysis, which conforms to an age-structural modeling and forecasting protocol that was originally developed for U.S. strategic intelligence efforts, finds: (1.) a disproportionately high level of coup vulnerability (the probability of experiencing a successful coup) among youthful countries (median age equal to or less than 25.5 years), particularly among states in the early-youthful segment of this phase (median age equal to or less than 20.5 years); and (2.) a dramatic one-time decline in coup vulnerability among all phases of the age-structural transition following the end of the Cold War. This essay’s two-decade forecast of an expected gradual decline in coups is consistent with the slow and halting pace of age-structural change that is currently projected by the 2022 revision of the UN Population Division’s medium scenario for countries along the equatorial midriff of Africa, and in parts of the Middle East and southcentral Asia. These findings support an alternative criticism – not of the U.S. State Department’s reluctance to restrict foreign assistance to coup perpetrators, but of currently mandated restrictions that neglect to exempt USAID programs known to advance the age-structural transition (i.e. those that extend girls’ educational attainment, improve access to family planning and other reproductive health services, or expand women’s autonomy and rights).