Make Love, Not War: Do Single Young Men Cause Political Violence?

Abstract

The theory that single young men drive terrorism and civil war has been repeated in academic articles, diplomatic dispatches and the popular press. This paper tests the theory and finds that while the proportion of young men has a statistically-significant impact on political violence, whether or not these men are married has no additional impact. The result may initially appear to contradict the individual-level evidence that shows that the overwhelming majority of political violence is committed by young, unmarried men. However, if being a terrorist or a guerrilla caused men to be single, then this would explain why most terrorists and guerrillas are single. Moreover, given that terrorists and guerrillas make up only a small fraction of the population, if participating in political violence caused them to be single then this would have a negligible impact on a country’s proportion of single young men. As a result, the effect of young men would be the same as that of single young men. This theory would therefore explain both the individual-level evidence that those who participate in violence are single as well as the country-level regression results that the effect of single young men is identical to that of young men.