Thursday, January 11, 2007

Boy troubles

Found via Bryan Appleyard's blog is this fascinating article from Financial Times, explaining one theory about why socieities become violent:

In Mr Heinsohn's view, when 15 to 29-year-olds make up more than 30 per cent of the population, violence tends to happen; when large percentages are under 15, violence is often imminent. The "causes" in the name of which that violence is committed can be immaterial. There are 67 countries in the world with such "youth bulges" now and 60 of them are undergoing some kind of civil war or mass killing.

Between 1988 and 2002, 900m sons were born to mothers in the developing world and a careful demographer could almost predict the trouble spots. In the decade leading up to 1993, on the eve of the Taliban takeover, the population of Afghanistan grew from 14m to 22m. By the end of this generation, Afghanistan will have as many people under 20 as France and Germany combined. Iraq had 5m people in 1950 but has 25m now, in spite of a quarter-century of wars. Since 1967, the population of the West Bank and Gaza has grown from 450,000 to 3.3m, 47 per cent of which is under 15. If Mr Heinsohn is right, then Palestinian violence of recent months and years is not explained by Israeli occupation (which, after all, existed 30 years ago) or poverty (the most violent parts of the Muslim world are not the poorest) or humiliation. It is just violence.

More explanation as to why this should be:

The problem...is that in a youth-bulge society there are not enough positions to provide all these young men with prestige and standing. Envy against older, inheriting brothers is unleashed. So is ambition. Military heroism presents itself as a time-honoured way for a second or third son to wrest a position of respectability from an otherwise indifferent society. Societies with a glut of young men become temperamentally different from "singleton societies" such as Europe's, where the prospect of sending an only child to war is almost unthinkable. Europe's pacifism since 1945, in Mr Heinsohn's view, reflects an inability to wage war, not a disinclination.

Go read it all. As Appleyard indicates, as a general rule it's wise to be sceptical about simple explanations about human behaviour, but this one smells right.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm told functional MR studies show that judgment areas in the frontal cortex are scarcely active in the under 25 age group. This was discussed by some of us doctors who started practicing medicine at age 22-23 as a bit of a worry. I wonder if it supports the argument presented?

Geoff

Caz said...

Haven't had a chance to read the linked piece yet, but he would have, surely, had a great deal to say about the future of both China and India, both of which are already seeing the repercussions of preferring boys over girls?

For both countries it would take several generations to correct the unnatural imbalance that has been created; this is not some short term thing.

Of course, it won't be undone at all unless there is a dramatic cultural change in terms of the way baby girls are valued.

Caz said...

On second blush, he doesn't appear to understand that the most voilent societies are those in which women are scarce, that is, when many men will have no chance of finding a wife.

When birth genders are not distorted, even 'lower status' men are still likely to find a partner.

On the other hand, when there are too few women, as with China and India, the whole dynamic, for all men, changes, and increased male competition, alienation, detachment from society, and, yes, violence, are very well known outcomes. Not much different to the struggles that occur over any scarce 'resource'. But in the case of scarcity of women, the repurcusions are dire and multi-generational.

Steve said...

Yes Caz, I thought of China and India when I read the article too. Then there was an article in the SMH on Saturday about China's skewed demographics, and it is worse than I thought. This article is worth its own post (above.)

As to Palestinians and their birth rate, I can't say I have ever seen an explanation as to why it is so high. (I think I posed the question once before in this blog, but I am too lazy to check.)