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.

墨西哥的暴力犯罪的发生率使大多数现代内战的人为代价相形见,，事实上，造成暴力行径的毒品卡特尔控制重要的地理区域。在这方面，墨西哥的“毒品战争”类似于控制撒哈拉以南非洲和其他地区丰富的自然资源的冲突，模糊了“政治”暴力与“社会”或“犯罪”暴力之间的区别。在南北战争文献中，年轻人的年龄结构被认为可以提供廉价的叛乱劳工，从而增加了叛乱组织向政府发动战争的机会。同样，相对庞大的“闲散”年轻男子群体可以说是通过大量机会少的青年人供应减少犯罪企业招聘成本的一个因素。认识到围绕毒品贩运的有组织犯罪是墨西哥犯罪和暴力的主要原因，我们问是否有大量的年轻男性同伙或男性“青年鼓舞”，较低的教育水平和较高的青年失业率使这些组织的招募更加容易，并且可能有助于解释墨西哥各州随时间推移的暴力犯罪率的差异。使用覆盖1997年至2010年期间墨西哥32个州的面板数据，我们发现，虽然粗略衡量区域青年凸起的情况与暴力青少年犯罪的模式无关，但低学历阶层的青年失业率很高，特别是在大型男性青年凸出的背景。这些结果与替代数据，样本量，估计技术和潜在内生性问题的对照相比仍然保持稳健。使用覆盖1997年至2010年期间墨西哥32个州的面板数据，我们发现，虽然粗略衡量区域青年凸起的情况与暴力青少年犯罪的模式无关，但低学历阶层的青年失业率很高，特别是在大型男性青年凸出的背景。这些结果与替代数据，样本量，估计技术和潜在内生性问题的对照相比仍然保持稳健。使用覆盖1997年至2010年期间墨西哥32个州的面板数据，我们发现，虽然粗略衡量区域青年凸起的情况与暴力青少年犯罪的模式无关，但低学历阶层的青年失业率很高，特别是在大型男性青年凸出的背景。这些结果与替代数据，样本量，估计技术和潜在内生性问题的对照相比仍然保持稳健。