5 ms·

The theory sounds convincing, but if you actually look at countries with the highest rates of young males to females, few, if any, support it (https://en.wikipe

The theory sounds convincing, but if you actually look at countries with the highest rates of young males to females, few, if any, support it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio). China, Portugal, South Korea, Kuwait... these are all countries with far more young men than women, and all are stable. I know that a country with a high male/female ratio is not necessarily the same thing as a country experiencing a "bulge in the rates of young, unmarried men", but I still couldn't find evidence to backup the claim that it would lead to crime and war. Here is a study which looked at 20 other studies of the number of males and violence and could not find a conclusive trend: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534714000251 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016953471...

fjsolwmv 9y ago
It's not the m:f ratio that matters, it's the number/fraction of males that are lacking in stable economic prospects.
nostrademons 9y ago
Here's commentary on that paper from the first author cited within it: https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2014/04/violent-straw-men-sex-ratios-conflict-methodological-disconnect/ https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2014/04/violent-straw-men-se... Only the abstract is available from your link so I couldn't look at the paper's data, but the critique's point is that the relationship between violence and sex ratio is U-shaped, with higher violence noted with both too few men and too many. Furthermore, many of the studies cited in your link were studies of inner-city black neighborhoods in the U.S, which feature both high violence and a large overpopulation of females because all the males are dead and incarcerated. Thrown into a linear relationship that's not actually linear, and they'll conflate the data significantly. The data on current sex ratios could be read one of two ways: either the theory is wrong, or the theory is predictive, and those countries with an overabundance of young males that are currently stable & at peace will not be at peace for long. There's some recent evidence for the latter hypothesis: of the 5 countries with the highest 15-24 sex ratio, Qatar is in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE that may be a prelude to war, and the Maldives just had a coup. I've got friends either living in or with family in China & India that say it's nowhere near as socially stable as is commonly perceived in the West, and that there are a number of social problems that could easily become a powder keg if economic growth dries up.
- RobLach 9y ago
  Reading through what's freely availble I get a sense of causation v. correlation misattribution. I think it's more likely that the political climate for increased violence also leads to increased imbalance of sexes, particularly because violence against women is more common and violence against men comes in waves in times of war or social strife.
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    Something that occurred to me (but I don't have data or time to follow up): I wonder if the U-shaped curve for sex ratio imbalances vs. societal violence reflects both causation and correlation. The dynamics would work like this: An oversupply of young, unmarried males in a population leads to intense competition for mates and for the resources that attract mates (jobs, money, territory, social status, etc). This triggers instincts in our brains that make us more competitive, and more willing to band together with others to remove potential competition. At some point this reaches a critical mass, populations go to war, and most of the excess males are killed off. This leads to an oversupply of females, but because of social inertia (people don't immediately adjust their behavior after massive depopulation, it takes time to adjust to the new reality), the society remains violent for some time afterwards, even though the sex ratio is now very skewed in favor of women. The data would show a U-shaped curve, but the oversupply of males would be the cause of violence while the oversupply of females would be a consequence of violence. To verify this hypothesis, there'd need to be a time and historical context attached to each data point, so that in addition to looking at the sex ratio, we'd look at the sex ratio trend before and after the outbreak of violence and on what timeframe violence rates go down. I'm unaware of studies that have done this.

fjsolwmv 9y ago

It's not the m:f ratio that matters, it's the number/fraction of males that are lacking in stable economic prospects.

nostrademons 9y ago

Here's commentary on that paper from the first author cited within it: https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2014/04/violent-straw-men-sex-ratios-conflict-methodological-disconnect/ https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2014/04/violent-straw-men-se... Only the abstract is available from your link so I couldn't look at the paper's data, but the critique's point is that the relationship between violence and sex ratio is U-shaped, with higher violence noted with both too few men and too many. Furthermore, many of the studies cited in your link were studies of inner-city black neighborhoods in the U.S, which feature both high violence and a large overpopulation of females because all the males are dead and incarcerated. Thrown into a linear relationship that's not actually linear, and they'll conflate the data significantly. The data on current sex ratios could be read one of two ways: either the theory is wrong, or the theory is predictive, and those countries with an overabundance of young males that are currently stable & at peace will not be at peace for long. There's some recent evidence for the latter hypothesis: of the 5 countries with the highest 15-24 sex ratio, Qatar is in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE that may be a prelude to war, and the Maldives just had a coup. I've got friends either living in or with family in China & India that say it's nowhere near as socially stable as is commonly perceived in the West, and that there are a number of social problems that could easily become a powder keg if economic growth dries up.

RobLach 9y ago
Reading through what's freely availble I get a sense of causation v. correlation misattribution. I think it's more likely that the political climate for increased violence also leads to increased imbalance of sexes, particularly because violence against women is more common and violence against men comes in waves in times of war or social strife.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  Something that occurred to me (but I don't have data or time to follow up): I wonder if the U-shaped curve for sex ratio imbalances vs. societal violence reflects both causation and correlation. The dynamics would work like this: An oversupply of young, unmarried males in a population leads to intense competition for mates and for the resources that attract mates (jobs, money, territory, social status, etc). This triggers instincts in our brains that make us more competitive, and more willing to band together with others to remove potential competition. At some point this reaches a critical mass, populations go to war, and most of the excess males are killed off. This leads to an oversupply of females, but because of social inertia (people don't immediately adjust their behavior after massive depopulation, it takes time to adjust to the new reality), the society remains violent for some time afterwards, even though the sex ratio is now very skewed in favor of women. The data would show a U-shaped curve, but the oversupply of males would be the cause of violence while the oversupply of females would be a consequence of violence. To verify this hypothesis, there'd need to be a time and historical context attached to each data point, so that in addition to looking at the sex ratio, we'd look at the sex ratio trend before and after the outbreak of violence and on what timeframe violence rates go down. I'm unaware of studies that have done this.