Is there an association between the proportion of the population that is young and national homicide rates, and when testing other theories cross-nationally is it necessary to control for this concept? To answer these questions, we carried out an extensive review of the empirical literature and then used data for the years 1999–2004 from a sample of 55 nations to test two predominant hypotheses: Percent young is significantly associated with homicide victimization rates across nations, and percent young accounts for a significant proportion of the overall variance in homicide victimization rates across nations. The results consistently indicated no significant association between percent young and homicide victimization rates across nations. Moreover, including percent young in models of cross-national homicide rates likely has negative ramifications for model fit. We situate these findings within the larger literature and provide a discussion of the implications for future cross-national homicide research.

中文翻译：

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青年百分比与跨国凶杀率之间关联的综合评估

年轻人口比例与全国凶杀率之间是否存在关联，在跨国测试其他理论时是否有必要控制这一概念？为了回答这些问题，我们对实证文献进行了广泛的审查，然后使用来自 55 个国家的样本 1999-2004 年的数据来检验两个主要假设：年轻人的百分比与各国的凶杀案受害率显着相关，以及在各国凶杀案受害率的总体差异中，年轻人的百分比占很大比例。结果一致表明，各个国家的年轻人百分比和凶杀案受害率之间没有显着关联。而且，在跨国凶杀率模型中包含年轻人的百分比可能会对模型拟合产生负面影响。我们将这些发现放在更广泛的文献中，并讨论对未来跨国凶杀案研究的影响。