Do Youth Bulges Affect Voting and Protesting? An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis

Most African countries are experiencing a youth bulge, where a very large proportion of their populations are made up of young people. How might this affect political participation? To understand this, we conduct an age-period-cohort analysis for two forms of participation: voting and protesting. We find that age has an inverted U-shaped, curvilinear relationship with voting, while there is a negative cohort effect. Protesting becomes less likely with age, even holding period and cohort constant in a cross-classified random effects model, while there is no clear cohort effect. Subsequent predictions on simulated data indicate that the age and cohort effects work in tandem so that as the youth ratio increases, predicted voter turnout declines and protesting rises. This suggests that youth bulges may lead to a shift where political participation increasingly takes place outside of formal political structures.