As world population figures pass the 7 billion mark, Jack Goldstone worries about the next three billion people. He says they will almost all "be growing up in countries that today are rated by the George Mason University Fragile States Index as having governments that have serious, high, or extreme fragility":
[I]n the next century, the fastest population growth will take place in the world’s least advanced economies and some of its worst-governed countries. A global effort to improve governance and education in those countries, allowing the world to benefit from the human potential of billions of additional people, could again usher in a new stage of global prosperity. But failure to meet this challenge may consign billions of people to live in countries with failing states, brimming with angry and frustrated youth, prone to high levels of violence, and recurrent humanitarian disasters on ever-larger scales. There is still time to build partnerships and make investments to respond to this challenge, but every week, another 3 million children are born in the poorest countries, and the clock ticks on.
The Dish 