by Fabian A. Koss

About the author: Fabian A. Koss is the youth liaison in the special programs section of the Office of External Relations of the Inter-American Development Bank, an institution that works to accelerate economic and social development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

For the first time in history, half the world’s population is under the age of 20. Nearly one billion children have been born in the 1990s alone. As of June 2000, population experts estimate that nearly 523 million people are living in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 269 million of them are under 24 years of age. Of the regions’ total population, children make up 51 percent—one out of every two people in the region is a child or a youth aged 24 and under. In...