Structural Demographic Theory

This, Rshiny app is for Private use only.

This RShiny application containing Structural Demographic Theory. It contains the forecasted results of the politcal stress indicator (PSI) from 2001 to 2034. Based on the research by Peter Turchin and Andrey Korotayev. (Turchin & Korotayev, 2020)

SDT looks to model the complex relationship between humun society as systems, these systems are general population, elites and the state(government). It looks at how these systems interact with each other and the social pressures that is generated. Peter Turchin and Andrey Korotayev predicted with their SDT model that there would be an sharp rise in instability in the 2010 to 2020 decade. Based on the world events, we have seen that their have been a sharp increase in riots and anti-government protests across America and Western Europe.

The US model suggests that as we move further into the future, the number of elites and their wages are increasing. Whereas, non-elite wages are decreasing, showcasing the inequality, casuing a build up in social pressure.

As, we moved into the mid 2020s, it can only be seen that the world instability is increasing in the US, and other Western European countries. One nation that appears to only start to have more protests, however no riots is Australia. This rshiny is aimed to create a SDT model for Australia to see what stage of instability Australia is undergoing and how the different States within Australia are affected. As the number of protests within Victora and New South Wales in more prominent than in Queensland.

It forecasts Distrust, Debt, Percent of Population aged 20 to 29, Wage and Urbanisation and uses that to calculate number of elites, relative wage of elite, which is then used to forecast the political stress indicator (PSI)

Please be skeptical of the original forecasted data due to the fact that there wasn't that much data to model the forecasted model on. To address this application will allow the user to linear adjust forecasted data of from 2024 to 2034 to look at different scenarios and how it will affect the PSI.

Distrust: For Australia Gross Debt and Australia Net Debt, the distrust in government was used. For the Australian States there wasn't any data on distrust on state level, only level state distrust on federal government. $$Distrust = (1-T)$$ Where T is Trust, and Distrust is proportion of distrust in the government

The debt of government on general government level scaled by GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Debt is scaled by GSP (Gross State Product) for States. $$Debt Scaled = \frac{Y}{G}$$ Given by the formula above, where Y is debt and GDP is G.

The proportion of the population thats aged 20 to 29, also taking into account children and elderly. Given by: $$A_{20-29}$$

The Wage of population without a university degree (education below bachelor) scaled by GDP per Capita relative to 2005. For States GSP per Capita was used. Given by: $$w$$

The proportion of the population that lives in urban areas. Given By: $$UrbanProp$$

Number of elites shown as e within the research. Calculated by using the rate of change given by the following differential equation: $$\frac{de}{dt}=μ_0\frac{w_0 - w}{w}$$ Where $$w_0 \ and \ μ_0$$ are scaling parameters set to 1 and 0.1 respectively like in the research. Given this the number of elites is given by previous number of elites + rate of change of number of elites $$e_t = e_{t-1} + \frac{de}{dt}$$ Where, like in the research we assume that this starts at 1

relative elite income shown as Ɛ within the research. $$Ɛ = \frac{1-wλ}{e}$$ where λ is the proportion of the population in the labor force, assumed to be 0.5 like in the research paper.

MMP: Mass Mobilization Potential shows the effect of growing immiseration $$MMP = w^{-1}UrbanPropA_{20-29}$$

EMP: Elite Mobilization Potential, quantifies intra-elite competition and conflict $$EMP = \frac{1}{s}Ɛ^{-1}e$$ where according to the paper, s is assumed to not change much so this becomes: $$EMP = Ɛ^{-1}e$$

SFD: State Fiscal Distress, measures the weakening of the state $$SFD = \frac{Y}{G}(1-T)$$

Political Stress Indicator (PSI), models the instability within society $$MMP × EMP × SFD$$ Becomes: $$PSI = w^{-1}UrbanPropA_{20-29}Ɛ^{-1}e\frac{Y}{G}(1-T)$$

(Turchin & Korotayev, 2020)

Solid line, shows the calculated PSI from 1958 to 2011 and dotted line shows the forecasted PSI from 2012 to 2020. (Turchin & Korotayev, 2020)

(Turchin & Korotayev, 2020)

This graph shows the forecast predicting for the PSI for USA. Turchin and Korotayev uses the PSI formula above but then multiplies it by 100 to adjust the scale, I think. Does this in r script to get the plot shown to the left. Doesn't say why its multipled by 100. (I'm not 100% sure). To keep this consistant I did the same for the Australian Example.

From this forecast Turchin and Korotayev correctly predict the increasing political stress in USA, as in the number of protests and riots during the the years of 2011 to 2020 increased significantly.