Demographics, Youth and Homicides in Colombia, 1979-2006

During the sixties, Colombian population grew faster than ever. Children that were born during that particular period became young adults in the decades of the eighties and nineties, the same years in which homicide rates reached historical maximums. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between these two phenomena. Can the explosive increases in homicide rates be attributed to demographic change? Cohort-level data on population and homicide victims is used to explore two mechanisms through which population forces could affect homicide rates; these mechanisms are composition effect and age-specific effect.