THE NATIONAL INSTABILITY INDICATOR  ( NII )
(previously named National Instability index, but Indicator is a better descriptor)

Revised: Jan. 2024

An Indicator of the social, political, economical, or environmental Instability within a Nation.

Since I first created the NII equation, about a decade ago, two of the variables have changed. The CIA and the U.N. are now using Gross National Income (GNI) instead of GDP (Gross Domestic Product)  and Natural Increase in Population (NIP) instead of RIP (Rate of Increase in Population). However, using the new variables, the equation is still valid.

The Natural Increase in Population (NIP) is defined as the crude birth rate minus the crude death rate.

The equation to calculate the NII of a nation is:

    NII = (TFR x NIP) / GNI

Where:

  TFR = Total Fertility Rate = Number of children per women.            
   NIP = Natural Increase in Population per 1000.
  GNI = Gross National Income (in Billions).


The old equation was: NII = (TFR x RIP) / GDP
Where RIP = Rate of Increase in Population.


The TFR, NIP, and GNI for each country are available at the UN and the CIA Web sites. It is public domain data. Wikipedia also has that data. Links to the Wikipedia data are provided in the References section at the end of this page. I removed previous links to the CIA website, because they redesigned their website and links to old pages are no longer valid.

When I first created the NII, I used TFRs and RIPs for the years 2005 - 2010 (They are averaged and reported every 5 years).

I noticed that countries that have the highest NII in different areas of the world, are the most unstable countries in that region, and usually they have had or are having problems that may not seem related to their population growth, but I believe that they are directly or indirectly related.

 I have also noticed that the higher the NII of a nation, the higher the probability that such nation experience a plague such as Ebola, HIV, Colera, or a famine, or civil war, or migration to a nation with a very low NII.

Take a look at this data, and notice that countries with an NII of 1 or greater are the ones in trouble.

Using data from (2005-2010)


The smaller the NII, the better for the stability of the country.

Data from (2005-2010)


So it seems that the problem is "NOT the total population of a country", nor "how many persons per square miles" it has. The problem is the rate of growth of the population and the number of children per women that they are having, specially when their GNI, or their resources are not able to support the rapid population growth.

They need to reduce their population or increase their Gross National Income. They believe that their civil wars are for religious or political reasons. They are unaware (at a conscious level) that the reason, they are killing each other, is because "nature (or the Life Force)" wants to reduce their rapid population growth. For the benefit of all life forms on this planet.

Note: The data for 2010-2015 & 2015-2020 is now available. However, I do not feel the need to use the new data with the NII equation. I have already proved, with the 2005-2010 data, that the NII is a valid indicator of the instability of a nation.

REFERENCE LINKS:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_income
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_increase
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.MKTP.PP.CD

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