Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century

The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21^st Century, a report of the CSIS Global Aging Initiative, was released at a CSIS Policy Forum on March 31, 2008. The report explores how population aging and population decline will constrain the ability of the United States and other developed countries to maintain national and global security over the next few decades. It also examines the security implications of emerging demographic trends in different regions of the developing world. While some political scientists and security experts argue that the forces of demography are pushing the world toward greater peace and stability, the CSIS report concludes that they pose growing security threats—and that the period of greatest danger lies just over the horizon in the 2020s. 

The CSIS Policy Forum began with a presentation by the authors on the report’s key findings. A panel of distinguished experts then commented on the report and offered their views on the geopolitical dimensions of the “global aging challenge.”