[user104658]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

the 18-24 age group are the most likely group not to have anything to leave behind, so its easy to leave. In a war or not, once you have a family, a house, friends and work ... you don't tend to throw it all away and leave, no matter what the circumstances are

Yes, this, young solo males are the least likely to have any concerns about leaving things behind and also are both A) The most likely to be willing to take the risk in the belief that they will make it and B) legitimately the most likely to be in a strong enough physical condition to successfully undertake the journey.

Also there's often an expense involved in undertaking it, and a whole family will pull together to send one or two people in the hopes that they can get set up somewhere and then the rest (children, etc.) will be able to join them later when they have somewhere safe to go. If you had a family of 20 pulling together resources to send just a couple of people out into the world, who would you choose? There are VERY OBVIOUS, logical, and not at all sinister reasons that most of the people in these surging crowds of refugees are young, physically fit males.