By the year 2100, more than half of the world’s children will be born in sub-Saharan Africa, a staggering population projection that represents a public policy crucible for African leaders. 

“If you provide jobs and a safe transition into adulthood and the workforce, then you can create sustained economic growth, better income distribution, and the type of household savings that build stability,” said Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, professor of global development and public policy at the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “If you don’t, you face a future of insecurity in a region that cannot sustain it. That’s the fork in the road many countries are facing.”

Eloundou-Enyegue’s research as a demographer spans decades and has led him to all parts of the globe. In his work as associate director of the Cornell Population Center in the Brooks School, he is primarily interested in the relationship between population transformation and economic well-being,a comparative study that incorporates demographic data across generations. His research combines traditional approaches that treat global impact as a function of the combined forces of population, affluence and technology with social science research that can situate those variables in their sociopolitical and cultural contexts.

Eloundou-Enyegue’s work probes, for instance, the lessons South Korea’s approach to its population inversion have for developing countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa on the cusp of similarly staggering demographic shifts.

“That middle moment when you have a dropping birth rate and a large and relatively young workforce is really critical,” said Eloundou-Enyegue. “But it’s not easy to study empirically because very few people have the data to compare across many countries to see the differences that make it possible for some countries to take advantage of the opportunity and others not.”

Eloundou-Enyegue and his student collaborators at the Cornell Population Center are currently working on a data model that would allow policymakers and researchers to compare countries undergoing similar demographic changes in real time.

While he was a member of an independent group of 15 scientists nominated by the U.N.’s Secretary General Panel to draft the first quadrennial report on “Sustainable Development Goals,” the work is also personal for him.

In 2016, in response to the rising number of the so-called “NEET” (youth who are neither in education, employment, or training), he started an annual two-month summer camp for young people in his home country of Cameroon to help prepare them and to create a model for how to transition young people into the workforce.

“I have studied these issues for decades and made recommendations to agencies and governments,” he said. “I am piloting a program that can be implemented in the short term to test on the micro level what can be applied at a more global level to help young people transition into adulthood.”

The program included 300 young adults in its first year, focusing on instilling basic principles of personal planning, financial literacy, and goal setting, in addition to creating exposure and pathways with employers. It has since trained and mentored over 2,000 young adults, but the effort will remain a tiny drop in the bucket unless mentoring can extend beyond two months and can cover more youth.     

The camps have generated useful insights into the low-cost, high-impact and wide reach programming needed to have a sizable impact at the national or regional levels. They are in increasing demand from youth and their families, in both low-income and middle-income groups.  

“Some people consider this capacity-building approach conservative, because it seeks to empower individuals, but it does not overlook structural barriers to opportunity,” Eloundou-Enyegue said. “We don’t just build the capacity, but also discuss with local governments how to create opportunities. It’s not just about teaching youth how to do a resume. It is also about opening doors to employment opportunities, making sure employers are aware of these initiatives, creating inroads with institutions that can offer loans. There’s a lot of work to be done beyond training.”

Eloundou-Enyegue believes demographers have a powerful perspective to inform public policy. In Africa in particular, the continent’s leaders must understand the significance of the tectonic shift they are facing, and how they can create a different future in this region by riding its current wave of demographic change and its historically large cohort of youth.

“For leadership and the shapers of policy, this demographic moment represents a great opportunity but also a substantial challenge. If they seize this opportunity and provide jobs and a transition into successful adulthood and employment, then they put the entire continent on a path to growth and economic development and well-being. If they can’t get a handle on this, the region faces a heightened risk of insecurity from underemployed youth, along with economic stagnation and a dramatic rise in socioeconomic inequality in a region that is quickly becoming the global epicenter of inequality.”

According to Matt Hall, director of the Cornell Population Center and professor of sociology and public policy at the Brooks School, the same population forces that are animating Eloundou-Enyegue to raise money for his program in Cameroon tell an equally powerful story close to home in upstate New York. 

“By the middle of this century, Africa is projected to be the only place on the planet with a population that is growing. This has enormous potential for building economic well-being where it hasn’t existed before, but it will also lead to the potential for mass emigration from Africa into places where declining fertility is leading to population aging and decline, including places like upstate New York,” Hall said. “This migration surplus in the face of fertility decline presents great opportunities for places in need of youthful workers.”

It’s those opportunities that are the focus of many of the faculty members affiliated with the Cornell Population Center.

“The beauty of demography lies in its simplicity, since all population change is driven by just three things: births, deaths, and migration,” Hall said. “Because of this simplicity demographers have a good idea of how populations will change in the future. Our goal is to use that clarity to advance effective planning, to create better policy and, ultimately, to support the well-being of people.”

Cornell Population Center demographer Kelly Musick, senior associate dean of research and professor of sociology and public policy at the Brooks School, examines state paid leave and other social safety net policies for new parents and their children, while Brooks School faculty Maureen Waller and Peter Rich explore how New York state driver's licensing reforms have impacted racial and economic disparities, and Laura Tach’s work on the consequences of the opioid epidemic for families and children in upstate New York informs policymaking at the state and local levels.

Jan Vink and his team at the center’s Program on Applied Demographics furnish real-time demographic data and population forecasts to New York state so legislators and staff can make crucial decisions about schools, libraries, businesses, and health care infrastructure. 

All of that work helps bring clarity to population-based planning decisions that have huge impacts on the well-being of communities from New York City to Buffalo.

With respect to changes in population and migration patterns, state lawmakers and officials must prepare for the fact that of the state’s 62 counties, 49 of them are experiencing population decline due to lower birth rates and out-migration. Meanwhile, immigrants from regions with growing populations, like Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, are coming in greater numbers. 

“You have more mobile young people and more places in need of young people. Immigrants can play an important role in revitalizing and replenishing these communities,” Hall said. 

“But the benefits of this immigration require policies that are effective in integrating and training these workers for the jobs that the baby boom generation is rapidly vacating.” 

Together, Hall, Eloundou-Enyegue and their faculty colleagues at the Cornell Population Center are pushing the traditional limits of their disciplines to find creative ways to meet a generation that could be defined by major population transformations. This includes leveraging demographic and big data tools to analyze how older populations navigate their communities, how racial diversity shapes patterns of marriage and childbearing, and how accelerating migration may undermine repressive political regimes.

“In sub-Saharan Africa, the money is scarce but what is even more scarce is the strategic planning,” Eloundou-Enyegue said. “From a policy standpoint, it’s really important to think creatively about how to make the public and private investment worthwhile; we need to rise to the occasion for our young people.”