While the World Population Prospects—the UN Population Division’s demographic estimates and projections—will never land on anyone’s non-fiction best-seller list, the latest version holds some noteworthy true stories. And the most remarkable demographic story of all may be Bangladesh’s.

Can we save the world one condom (or birth control pill) at a time? The third episode of Everybody Counts, hosted by Jennifer D. Sciubba, a professor of political demography at Rhodes College, makes the case that family planning is the foundation of peace and security by highlighting the links between population growth and political instability.

The Kurdish people’s century-long quest for self-determination reveals a key aspect of ethnic separatist conflicts. Ideas of nationhood can endure for generations, unifying people across borders and often making separatist conflicts hard to resolve. But how much harder is it to resolve separatist conflicts than other violent, non-territorial intra-state wars (such as political revolutions)? In practical terms, how much longer, on average, can policymakers expect separatist conflicts to persist and reoccur than the typical political revolution? These are tough questions. Surprisingly, demography helps us find the answers.

“The idea to make this film came from a very personal place,” said filmmaker Luciana Kaplan at a recent Wilson Center screening of her documentary Rush Hour, recalling how a woman who worked for her spent six hours a day on public transportation. “I have to make a film about this,” she said she told herself, “because this is a silent enemy that is attacking all of us in big cities.”

“There are more young people in the world today than in any other time in the history of the world,” said Beza Tesfaye, Senior Researcher at Mercy Corps, at a recent event at the U.S. Institute of Peace on Mercy Corps’ efforts to engage youth in Somalia and Afghanistan in order to promote stability and prevent violence. “As we know, marginalized youths are the ones often to be recruited into violent movements. Not only do we have to focus on conflict, but we also have to put youth at the center of development programs to address these issues.”

“There is a close relationship between fertility rates and health on one hand, and economic growth on the other,” said Peter McPherson, President of the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities and former USAID Administrator, at the final event in a three-part series on the role of population and family planning in supporting economic growth, health, and education.