The significance of age structure, education, and youth unemployment for explaining subnational variation in violent youth crime in Mexico

Abstract

Violent crime in Mexico occurs at a rate that dwarfs the human costs of most contemporary civil wars, and the drug cartels responsible for the violence exercise de facto control over significant geographical territories. In this respect, the Mexican “drug wars” resemble conflicts over the control of rich natural resources in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, blurring the distinction between “political” and “social” or “criminal” violence. In the civil war literature, a young age structure has been argued to provide inexpensive rebel labor and thus increase opportunities for a rebel group to wage war against a government. Similarly, relatively large groups of “idle” young men could arguably be a factor that reduces recruitment costs for criminal enterprises through the abundant supply of youth with low opportunity cost. Acknowledging organized crime around drug trafficking as a major cause of crime and violence in Mexico, we ask whether the availability of large young male cohorts, or male “youth bulges”, low education and high youth unemployment ease the recruitment to these organizations and may contribute to explain variance in violent crime rates across Mexican states over time. Using panel data covering 32 states in Mexico during the 1997–2010 period, we find that, while a coarse measure of regional youth bulges is not associated with patterns of violent youth crime, high youth unemployment in low-education strata is, in particular in the context of large male youth bulges. These results remain robust against alternative data, sample size, estimation techniques and controls for potential endogeneity concerns.

A bibliometric study of reference literature on youth unemployment

“…The key area of interest explored could be factors influencing youth unemployment such as duration dependence (Flek et al , 2015; Cockx and Picchio, 2013; Raaum, 2009; García-Pérez and Muñoz-Bullón, 2005), skills (Cyron and Mehrotra, 2022; Groh et al , 2016), training (Šileika, 2004; Upward, 2002), income distribution (De Fraja et al , 2021; Singh et al , 2020), labour market (Liotti, 2022; Ylistö and Husu, 2021; Ranchhod and Daniels, 2021; Bradley and Crouchley, 2020), policies (Jumpah, 2020; Focacci, 2020), wage determination (Gabriel and Schmitz, 2020; Vasilescu and Begu, 2019), minimum wage (Fialová and Mysíková, 2021; Marimpi and Koning, 2018), labour supply (Holford, 2020; McTier and McGregor, 2018), education (Cyron and Mehrotra, 2022; Juárez et al , 2022; Krahn et al , 2015; Odoardi, 2020; Pompei and Selezneva, 2021; Meyer and Mncayi, 2021) and youth entrepreneurship (Munyuki and Jonah, 2021; Justina and Emmanuel, 2020; Jumpah, 2020; Ubogu, 2020).…”

“…By producing scientific knowledge that aids in the recognition of the complexities of human processes and behaviours, social science research significantly contributes to the enrichment of the community as a whole (Thorat and Verma, 2017). When young people are unemployed, it causes social unrest and may increase crime and terrorism (Beauchamp and Chan, 2014; Okafor and Piesse, 2018; Small and Obioha, 2014; Juárez et al , 2022), all of which contribute to political instability. Youth unemployment causes psychological illness because of anxiety, alienation and depression (Goldsmith et al , 1996).…”

Investimento em educação diminui a criminalidade: análise dos municípios do Rio Grande do Sul usando econometria espacial

“…Além disso, o fato de estar mais tempo na escola, diminui o tempo de exposição ao crime, já que a sala de aula é um ambiente relativamente mais seguro. Esses efeitos combinados acabam impactando positivamente o ambiente social e o crescimento econômico local (Ahmed et al, 2019;Brutti & Montolio, 2019;Juárez et al, 2020;Butt et al, 2017;Becker, 2012). A partir desses resultados, pode-se calcular o aumento dos investimentos em educação por mil habitantes nos municípios, necessário para reduzir em uma unidade o número de crimes por mil habitantes.…”

“…Neste estudo, utiliza-se como referência básica os modelos da economia do crime, inspirados em Becker (1968), juntamente com modelos que exploram mais especificamente os efeitos da educação sobre a criminalidade (Ahmed, Abdullah, & Akhtar, , 2019;Brutti & Montolio, 2019;Juárez, Urdal, & Vadlamannati, 2020;Butt, Munir, Arif, & Zafar, 2017;Becker, 2012). Na perspectiva da economia do crime, foram revisados vários estudos, que ajudaram a compreender os possíveis fatores que estimulam ou inibem a atividade criminal.…”

Latin American young NEETs: Brazil as a case study for systemic risks of youth social exclusion

“…Many other Latin American countries have a high level of violent organised crime that place youth at risk, including Colombia, Paraguay, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala (Zaitch and Antonopoulos 2019). Globally, there are similar concerns that larger contingents of young, unemployed, poorly educated, single men are recruited by criminal networks (Juárez, Urdal, and Vadlamannati 2020). For instance, analysis of global data shows that youth unemployment is associated with domestic terrorism, depending on a country's level of corruption, government ineffectiveness and limited rule of law (Adelaja and George 2020).…”