Youth, Violence and Extremism: Debunking Conventional Wisdoms

The notion that an excess of male youth in a population leads to social unrest, war and terrorism is widespread.  Jennings Randolph Senior Fellows Marc Sommers and Matt Venhaus agree that demographic factors can impact the stability and security of countries, but they caution against making easy causal linkages between the two. Instead, they argue that our understanding of why and how young men become violent or extremists is limited and often misguided. Hence many national and international policies and programs that attempt to deal with these two issues have little effect or - worse - are counterproductive.