Rapid population growth constitutes one of the most critical problems confronting many Middle Eastern and North African countries, placing incremental pressure on their finite water and other natural resources and challenging their abilities to grow sufficient food, accommodate school and university graduates with jobs, build adequate urban and rural infrastructures, contain rapid urbanization, and alleviate poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, and disease. More than one-third of the population is under the age of fifteen in a majority of countries and, thus, has yet to marry and reach reproductive age. As a result, in most places the number of women of childbearing age (fifteen to forty-nine) will more than double in the next thirty years. Because there are so many young people, by one estimate the region's economies would have to generate half as many additional jobs by 2010 as existed in 1996 to avoid an increase in already high unemployment rates, particularly among young adults. The growing bulge of unemployed young people has serious political ramifications for many Middle Eastern regimes, from Algeria to Saudi Arabia. These problems will likely get worse in the short term because of demographic momentum—the parents of the future have already been born.