Abstract
Statistics reveal the steady, long-term, increase of self-and-other-destructive conduct among American youths. The conduct involved includes suicide, homicide, out-of-wedlock births, drug abuse and recorded crimes. A variety of hypotheses have been proposed to interpret this conduct — and to indicate possible remedies. Some of these hypotheses are briefly characterized, generally evaluated, and rejected. One hypothesis, the so-called youth bulge theory, suggests that the conduct is due to a disproportinate relationship between the youth population and the adult population; this disproportion — the so-called youth bulge — ultimately led to various modes of youth alienation. The youth bulge hypothesis was tested through a regression analysis which estimated the contemporaneous relationship between a measure of adolescent disorder (the youth suicide rate over time) and the proportion of youths to adults. A statistically significant but small relationship was found between the two variables. The implications of this conclusion are briefly sketched.
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Shapiro, J., Wynne, E.A. Adolescent alienation: Evaluating the hypotheses. Soc Indic Res 10, 423–435 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00300436
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00300436