Beware the Global Gen Z Revolution

Coming soon to NYC

Robert Manning writes in The National Interest:

The era of “polycrises”—a cascade of multiple interacting crises—adds another layer to the challenge that governments in these youthful nations face. Many of these states are trying to navigate their demographic challenges amid the entropy of an uncertain world order, coercive great powers, deep debt, shrinking aid and investment, and climate change. The World Bank lists 39 “fragile and conflict-affected states.” Less-developed countries have become the “losers” in a fragmenting world of growing North-South, South-South, and middle-income-versus-poorer divides.

In contrast, during the period of maximum globalization from the mid-1980s to 2008, an inclusive system of relatively open trade and capital flows reduced poverty. It facilitated an export-led growth model that accelerated the emergence of a global middle class, most pronounced in East Asia, India, Brazil, and, most dramatically, in China. Abundant labor in China during the 1980s and 1990s (a result of the country’s median age of 21) fueled Deng Xiaoping’s pro-market reforms, which in turn spurred spectacular GDP growth from $190 billion in 1980 to $18.8 trillion in 2024. While China has become a leading global tech power, other Asian countries, such as Brazil and Mexico, have also fared well, steadily moving up the value chain from textiles to electronics and automobiles.

The current circumstances that youth bulge nations find themselves in are altering development possibilities. The backlash to globalization, protectionism, and China’s manufacturing overcapacity limits prospective markets. Capital flows are concentrated, disproportionately going to the United States, and increasingly, to middle-income emerging markets. The $11.4 trillion of developing nation debt in 2023 and diminished aid to and investment in many less-developed states are taking a toll…

The youth bulge dividend is country-specific, and some states are better positioned than others. Apart from local governance questions, external factors—current global trends—make local efforts problematic. The demise of the neoliberal economic model, the rise of inward-looking nationalisms, climate pressures, and a slow-growth global economy are all negative pressures. US priorities of gaining access to rare earth and critical minerals, as well as the race to build AI data centers, may become an asset for youth-bulge nations.

However, the US abandonment of multilateralism in general will create the most lasting impact. The American rejection of the UN Sustainable Development agenda and all climate finance makes both efforts increasingly aspirational. It is unclear how US skepticism toward such UN mechanisms will impact these efforts. The Trump administration’s calls for major reform of the IMF, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), which have been critiqued as not fit for purpose, will yield desired change. The G7 nations, with 13.7 percent of the world’s population, hold 59.1 percent of the IMF’s voting shares. As the United States hosts the G20 Summit in 2026, the shape of its future role should become clearer.

If these global factors affect the capacity of youth bulge governments to meet the Gen Z challenge, the outcome will almost certainly have a global impact. The success of many governments in Africa and South and Southeast Asia in realizing the demographic dividend would be a source of global growth and prosperity.

However, the degree to which the youth bulge becomes a greater burden will not only drive political change in those nations but also spill over globally. The stakes of a greater North-South divide are much larger. The consequences of terrorism, internationalized civil conflicts, mass migration, and disease stemming from political and economic disruptions will increasingly impact industrialized nations in the West and East Asia, and intensify great-power competition.