Globally, the people who fight in wars or commit violent crimes are nearly all young men. Henrik Urdal of the Harvard Kennedy School looked at civil wars and insurgencies around the world between 1950 and 2000, controlling for such things as how rich, democratic or recently violent countries were, and found that a “youth bulge” made them more strife-prone. When 15-24-year-olds made up more than 35% of the adult population””as is common in developing countries””the risk of conflict was 150% higher than with a rich-country age profile.
If young men are jobless or broke, they make cheap recruits for rebel armies. And if their rulers are crooked or cruel, they will have cause to rebel. Youth unemployment in Arab states is twice the global norm. The autocrats who were toppled in the Arab Spring were all well past pension age, had been in charge for decades and presided over kleptocracies.
Christopher Cramer of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London cautions that there is no straightforward causal link between unemployment and violence. It is not simply a lack of money that spurs young men to rebel, he explains; it is more that having a job is a source of status and identity.
Read it all from the Economist.
Um yes, and no.
Certainly history was made by young men. You were old if you were lucky enough to reach the age of 40, and this may explain some of the conquests of those like 24 year old Alexander the Great who were young men, who probably would not have inherited power until they were much older in modern times.
But while it is certainly true that war is a young man’s game, who are the leaders, and are they any the less aggressive for being older?
The Soviet Union was at its most aggressive when it was run by the geriatocracy, and from Robert Mugabe to Osama bin Laden to Mullah Omah to al Baghdadi, as leaders have aged they have only become more ruthless and aggressive. In the modern age, it is the over 40’s who have led and given the theoretical underpinings of the most aggresive movements and states. Looking at the world today, I see no evidence that there is less conflict with older leaders, quite the reverse.
While the fighters may be young men, the leaders are older men. Who are the more dangerous?
This also describes American inner-cities, which are more violent than some of these other areas and account for the large majority of violent crime in the United States.