| Description |
Demographic factors influence the intensity and duration of conflicts and collective violence is more common where there are high numbers of young men to older men, and where there are more marriageable men to women. The notion that young, unmarried men are more likely than other cohorts to be unattached risk-takers explains these findings. This dissertation investigates whether these same demographic factors increase the likelihood a country will produce suicide attackers. Information on individual attackers was assembled from three earlier studies and corroborated using LexisNexis searches of major world news publications. Personal information, including age, sex, and country of origin, was collected for 1,208 individual suicide attackers who acted between 1981 and 2007. This information was then used to create a second dataset to make comparisons between countries and regions that produced suicide attackers and those that did not. Thirty-three of the 219 countries and regions analyzed produced suicide attackers, and those that did had higher numbers of marriageable men to women, higher polygyny rates, higher percentages of Muslims in their populations, and larger populations overall. Counter to the hypothesis, countries with higher numbers of young men to old were less likely to produce suicide attackers. It may be that the older men in polygynous societies create an even greater scarcity of marriageable women, making it more difficult for young men to marry. Faced with relatively few reproductive and perhaps other alternatives, these young men are more prone to become suicide attackers. |
