Elite overproduction is a concept developed byPeter Turchin that describes the condition of a society that has anexcess supply of potential elite members relative to its ability to absorb them into thepower structure.^[1][2][3] This, he hypothesizes, is a cause for social instability, as those left out of power feel aggrieved by their relatively lowsocioeconomic status.^[1][2][3]

Turchin first described his theory in an article published in 2010.^[4] His model cannot foretell precisely how a crisis will unfold; it can only yield probabilities. Turchin likened this to the accumulation of deadwood in a forest over many years, paving the way for a cataclysmic forest fire later on: it is possible to predict a massive conflagration, but not what causes it.^[5] The model also does not offer definitive solutions, though it can clarify thetrade-offs of various options.^[6] For Turchin, history suggests that anon-violent end of elite overproduction is possible, citing the two decades after World War II in the United States, a time of economic redistribution and reversal of upward social mobility.^[7][6]

According to Turchin andJack Goldstone, periods of political instability have throughout human history been due to the purely self-interested behavior of the elite.^[8] When the economy faced an expansion in the workforce, exerting a downward pressure on wages, the elite generally kept much of the wealth generated to themselves, resistingtaxation andincome redistribution. In the face of intensifying competition, they also sought to restrict upwardmobility to preserve their power and status for their descendants.^[9] These actions exacerbatedinequality, a key driver of sociopolitical turbulence^[9] due to the proneness of the relatively well-off to radicalism.^[10] In the twenty-first-century Western countries, the popularity ofprogressive political beliefs among university graduates, for instance, may be due to widespreadunderemployment rather than from exposure to progressive ideas or experiences during their studies.^[11][12] Stagnant wages and housing unaffordability make young professionals more likely to view the status quo as azero-sum game.^[13] Turchin and his colleagues have argued that strife among elites helps explain social disturbances during later years of various Chinese dynasties, thelate Roman empire, theAztec Empire before theSpanish conquest, theFrench Wars of Religion, and France before theRevolution.^[4][14] Turchin correctly predicted in 2010 that this situation would cause social unrest in the United States during the 2020s.^[4][15]

Turchin's model also explains whypolygamous societies tend to be more unstable than monogamous ones: men of high status in a polygamous society tend to have more children, consequently producing more elites.^[16]

In an essay, philosopherFrancis Bacon cautioned of the threat ofsedition if "more are bred scholars, thanpreferment can take off."^[17] Political economistJoseph Schumpeter asserted that a liberal capitalist society contains the seeds of its own downfall as it breeds a class of intellectuals hostile to bothcapitalism andliberalism, though without which these intellectuals cannot exist.^[18] Before Turchin, political scientistSamuel Huntington had warned that a disconnect between upward social mobility and the ability of the institutions to absorb these new individuals could lead to sociopolitical decay.^[19] HistorianJohn Lewis Gaddis observed that while young people have continuously wanted to challenge the norms of society, by investing so much in education, major countries on both sides of the Cold War gave the young the tools to inflict the tumult of the late 1960s to early 1970s upon their homelands.^[20] EconomistThomas Sowell noted that many intellectuals are shielded bytenure and the dominant ideologies of their societies and as such may face no consequences for their recommendations, despite wielding great power and influence.^[21]

In Australia, although successive governments have promoted to young people, the nation faces stagnant productivity.^[21] Many students find themselves indebted after graduation,^[18] especially those not in business orSTEM.^[21] However, by the 2020s, even people with degrees incomputer science, previously a booming field, were finding themselves facing a tough job market.^[21] Only half of the wages and salaries of theGroup of Eight, the oldest and most prestigious universities in the nation, went to academics via teaching and research.^[18] Meanwhile, administrative bureaucracies have grown in size and campuses more politically left-wing and conformist.^[21]

Canada is one of the most prosperous societies of the twenty-first century. But the country's trajectory is not so positive.^[14] Even though Canada has the highest percentage of workers with higher education in theG7, the nation's productivity ranks lower than every other nation's in this group exceptJapan.^[22] One reason, according to theBank of Canada, is the mismatch between skills learned at school and those demanded by the work place.^[23] As a result, many new entrants to the job market find themselves either unemployed despite being highly trained, or stuck in low-wage positions.^[23] Like their peers in United States and the European Union, young Canadians with university degrees no longer enjoy a lower rate of employment compared to those without.^[1] By August 2024, Canada's youth unemployment rate was 14.5%, the highest seen since 2012.^[24] The Bank of Canada refers to this as an economic emergency.^[22] Furthermore, Canada's income gap, as measured by thePalma ratio, has risen noticeably since the 1980s.^[14]

One of the factors that led to the decline and collapse of theQing dynasty, the last of Imperial China, was theTaiping Rebellion, one of the deadliest civil wars in human history. The Rebellion was triggered by disgruntled well-educated young men, who had studied long and hard for the punishingcivil-service examinations only to find themselves unable to seek lucrative government posts. The Taiping Rebellion exacerbated the other problems facing Imperial China at the time, including floods, droughts, famines, and foreign incursions.^[25][26]

In modern China, the expansion of higher education, which started in the late 1990s, was done for political rather than economic reasons.^[27] By the early 2020s, Chinese youths find themselves struggling with job hunting. University education offers little help.^[28] Due to the mismatch between education and the job market, those with university qualifications are more likely to be unemployed.^[29] About a quarter of young Chinese prefer to work for the government rather than the private sector, and, in accordance with traditionalConfucian belief, do not have a high opinion ofmanual labor.^[29] But in order to qualify for the civil service, they, like their own forebears, must prepare for and pass a series of grueling exams, a process that is not only psychologically jarring but also time-consuming. They generally cannot work, earn money, and learn marketable skills in the mean time, incurring an economic loss not just for them but also for society. In addition, should they be unable to secure a job in the bureaucracy, the knowledge gained by preparing for said exams, such asXi Jinping Thought, will be of little use in the private sector.^[30] By June 2023, China's unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24 was about one in five.^[31] In response, the government has recommended that students and their families consider vocational training programs to fillblue-collar positions, but changing public perception has been slow.^[32]

In 2011, as part of theArab Spring, young Egyptians took to the streets to demand "bread, freedom, and social justice." Youth unemployment was a serious problem facing the country at the time, especially among those with at least a bachelor's degree. Young women's unemployment rate was even worse than young men's. This problem has been driven in part by Egypt's population growth.^[33]

In theVictorian era, elite overproduction was overcome by outwardmigration,industrialization, and political reforms that gave power to a larger segment of the general public.^[34]

In the modern United Kingdom, there were not enough working-class Britons disenchanted with the status quo to supportBrexit; the movement was buoyed by highly educated voters,^[11] many of whom were indebted and under- or unemployed as there were not enough jobs to match their degrees.^[12] Worse, many pursued university courses that offered them little in the way of marketable skills.^[35] A 2019 analysis by theInstitute for Fiscal Studies suggests that a fifth of university alumni would have been better off had they not gone to university.^[36] Having a master's degree in certain subjects such as languages, English, sociology, history, and health actually incurs a financial loss compared to having only a bachelor's degree, and this trend is worse for men than it is for women.^[36] Another reason behind the radicalization of British university graduates is therising cost of living, including the cost of housing.^[35] As the educated class moves further to the left, left-wing ideals grow in popularity.^[11][12] The United Kingdom now finds itself amid a cultural conflict revolving around issues of race, sex, and climate change.^[35]

In the United States, while most historians and social researchers consider theNew Deal of the 1930s to be a turning point in American history, Turchin argues that from the point of view of thestructural-demographic theory, it was merely a continuation of theProgressive Era (1890s to 1910s), though some trends were accelerated.^[6] During this time, a booming middle class increasingly sent its children to colleges and universities in order to ensure their status and taking advantage of a growing economy that needed more workers with higher education. Enrollments almost doubled during the 1890s, reaching 82,000 in 1900 (or 2.4 percent of the college-age population).^[37]: 12 By 1930, this number was 1.1 million (7.2 percent).^{[37]: 34–5} But policies of economic redistribution were commonplace.^[38] Taxes on high income-earners were high, many regulations were imposed on businesses, and labor unions became more powerful.^[38] Upward social mobility was reversed, as can be seen from admissions quotas (against Jews and blacks) atIvy League institutions and the fall of the number of medical and dental schools. Concerns over socialtrust prompted restrictions on immigration and less tolerance for those deemed socially deviant.^[6] As political scientistRobert Putnam explains, ethnic and cultural diversity has downsides in the form of decliningcultural capital, fallingcivic participation, lower general social trust, and greater social fragmentation.^[39] For Turchin, the golden years of the 1950s mirrored theEra of Good Feelings.^[6]

Turchin observed that between the 1970s and the 2020s, while the overall economy has grown,real wages for low-skilled workers have stagnated, while the costs of housing and higher education continue to climb. Popular discontent has led to urban riots, which also happened during the years right before theCivil War. In the 1850s, the level of antagonism between the Northern industrialists and the Southern plantation owners also escalated, resulting in incidents of violence in the halls of Congress.^[7]

Turchin argued that elite overproduction due to the expansion of higher education was also a factor behind the turmoil of late 1960s, the 1980s, and the 2010s.^[40] Indeed, students have been at the vanguard of progressive activism for decades.^[41] By the 2010s, it had become clear that the cost of higher education has ballooned faster than inflation over the previous three to four decades, thanks to growing demand.^[5] In 2015, some 70 percent of American high-school students were heading to colleges and universities.^[42] But about a quarter of American university students failed to graduate within six years in the late 2010s and those who did faced diminishing wage premiums.^[43] At the same time, students at elite institutions, such as Harvard, increasingly hold highly left-wing views, putting them at odds with not just their peers at other institutions of higher learning but also the public at large. Progressive activism has become par for the course at the nation's top schools during this period.^[40][41]

In his prediction that the 2020s would be politically turbulent, Turchin used current data and the structural-demographic theory, a mathematical model of how population changes affect the behavior of the state, the elite, and the commons, created by Jack Goldstone. Goldstone himself predicted using his model that in the twenty-first century, the United States would elect anational populist leader.^[9] Elite overproduction has been cited as a root cause of political tension in the U.S., as so many well-educatedMillennials are either unemployed,underemployed, or otherwise not achieving the high status they expect.^[15] TheOccupy Wall Street protest of 2011 was an example of a movement dominated by Millennials, who felt aggrieved by theirrelative rather thanabsolute economic deprivation.^[44]Richard V. Reeves, a senior fellow at theBrookings Institution, wrote in his bookDream Hoarders (2017) that "more than a third of the demonstrators on the May Day 'Occupy' march in 2011 had annual earnings of more than $100,000. But, rather than looking up in envy and resentment, the upper middle class would do well to look at their own position compared to those falling further and further behind."^[45]: 7 Similarly, the election of a self-styled "democratic socialist" in 2025 as Mayor of New York City, a hub of global finance and capitalism, was made possible by a large number of upper middle-class residents who were ostensibly doing well financially, but who complained of the financial pressure of living in a city they havegentrified for decades.^[46] Political commentatorDavid Brooks identified this "cognitive dissonance" as "the contradiction of the educated class. Virtue is defined by being anti-elite. But today's educated class constitutes the elite, or at least a big part of it."^[40]

Alumni of elite schools who take up positions in finance, consulting, or technology continue to be lucratively employed.^[40] Meanwhile, the nation continued to produce excess lawyers^[47] and PhD holders, especially in the humanities and social sciences, for which employment prospects have been dim, even before the COVID-19 pandemic.^[48] At a time of such intense intra-elite competition, evidence of corruption, such as the college admissions scandal revealed byOperation Varsity Blues, further fuels public anger and resentment, destabilizing society.^[26]

According to projections by theU.S. Census Bureau, the share of people in their 20s continued to grow till the end of the 2010s, meaning theyouth bulge would likely not fade away before the 2020s.^[49] As such, the gap between thesupply and demand in the labor market would likely not fall before then, and falling or stagnant wages generate sociopolitical stress.^[49] In fact, theAmerican population was aging, making revolutions less likely.^[50] And while the polarizing nature of social media can perpetuate a sense of crisis and despair, these platforms are too disjointed for a unifying figure to emerge and seize power.^[50] Turchin predicted that the resolution to this crisis will occur in the 2030s and will substantially change the character of the United States.^[34]

Market demand for people withMaster of Business Administration (MBA) degrees, including graduates of elite business schools, has fallen between the late 2010s and mid-2020s.^[51] The early 2020s saw many faculty members leaving academia,^[52] especially those from the humanities.^[53] Turchin noted, however, that the U.S. was also overproducingSTEM graduates.^[7] Already, a number of public and private universities have cut their STEM enrollments and departments.^[54][55] During thesecond presidency of Donald Trump, federal funding for universities and research has been cut.^[56][55][57] But even before that, the federal government has for years been prioritizingblue-collar jobs in an attempt to re-industrialize the nation.^[58][59] Since the late 2010s, the United States has been facing a shortage of skilled tradespeople^[60][61] while manywhite-collar positions have been eliminated by artificial intelligence (AI).^[62] Large numbers of researchers are considering leaving the U.S. as they now find themselves unable to finance their own research or their students. Graduate students are choosing other countries.^[63][64] At the same time,demand for higher education continues to decline as Americans increasingly question thereturns on investment^[56] and because of population aging.^[65] A growing share ofGeneration Z is choosing apprenticeships, vocational training, and other alternatives to higher education.^[66][67]

• Power struggle
• Credentialism
• Toynbee's theory of social decay
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century
• Joseph Tainter

• Political science terminology
• Power (social and political) concepts

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