Is the "youth bulge" hypothesis an evident explanation for imperialistic/rebellious historic movements and genocides?

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A recent report by USAID offers a brief but insightful view on some of current research on 'Youth Bulge' hypothesis. Some of the key take-away are:

  • The common thread across the latest research is that youth bulges alone do not cause conflict. Rather, when unstable politics and social deterioration are combined with large numbers of disadvantaged young men, then new problems arise.

  • The latest findings here emphasize regime type and factionalism, poverty/development, “bad neighbors,” and the level of state discrimination. Youth bulges appeared significant in the PITF’s early attempts at modeling, but when measures of regime characteristics were included,the significance dropped away (Goldstone et al 2005, 12-13).

  • Urdal & Hoelscher 2009). Urdal has found no correlation between youth bulges, urbanization and violence, although the caveat here is that other factors, such as absence of democratic institutions, low economic growth and low levels of secondary educational school are associated with disturbance (Urdal & Hoelscher, 1).

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A (male) youth bulge sometimes occurs when the birth rate is FALLING. That's because most men prefer to marry women younger than them. So if the birth rate is falling, there are more older men of the earlier period than younger women of the later period.

This happened with American cohorts born in the 1960s (and in certain other parts of the world). One observation (possibly not a consequence), was that those young men born in the 1960s made better soldiers in the Persian Gulf War than young men born in the 1940s and early 1950s in the Vietnam war.

The men born in the 1940s and early 1950s enjoyed a higher ratio of women born slightly later, from 1945-1960. That may be one reason that cohort of men preferred to "make love, not war."

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