The average age of world leaders has been rising over the last 50
years. Back in 1975, the average
president or Prime Minister was 55 years old.
Today, the average is 62. Not just that, but nine out of
the 10 most populated countries in the world today have leaders
over the age of 70. That's an improvement.
In 2024, it was all 10. In African countries where the
populations are youngest, the leaders are amongst the oldest.
The Central African Republic has the youngest population in the
world with a median age of 14 years old, but its president is
67 years old. In Uganda, where the median age
is 18, the leader is 80 years old and the president of
Cameroon is the oldest serving state leader at 92 in a country
where the average age is once again 18.
According to The Economist, countries that have less of a
say in who they're governed by are driving the trend towards
ageing leaders. In democracies, Heads of
Government tend to be younger today than they were 50 years
ago. In hybrid regimes, where
citizens have some political rights, Heads of Government are
now on average 62 years old, which is 9 years older than the
leaders were on average in those countries years 50 years ago.
In authoritarian regimes, the average dictator is now 64 years
old, which is 12 years older than dictators were 50 years
ago. This makes a certain amount of
sense. In autocracies, leaders have
always been reluctant to give up power, and the Economist points
out that a big driver of the change towards older leadership
is just that people are living a lot longer today than they did
in the past. We shouldn't expect this to
change until either more countries adopt democracy or
increases in life expectations slows down.
In the free world, there are some interesting changes. 50
years ago there were no democratically elected leaders
under the age of 45, but today there are three.
Similarly, there were no democratically elected leaders
over the age of 7550 years ago, but now there are 5.
So what we're seeing is that the dispersion in the ages of
elected officials in democracies has grown over time.
Amongst wealthy democracies, the United States is quite an
outlier. Over the last 50 years, not only
have its presidents, but all of its politicians have gotten
significantly older. American legislators are the
oldest in the rich world. The average age of members of
the House of Representatives and Senate is now 59 years old,
almost a decade older than the average for elected lawmakers in
the OECDA group of mostly high income Democratic nations.
Last year, when Joe Biden was running against Donald Trump, I
compared the two candidates to Stotler and Waldorf, the two
cantankerous old men in the box seats from The Muppet Show, and
joked that you wouldn't trust either of them with the remote
control not to mind running the world's largest economy.
Joe Biden was 81 years old at the time and the oldest sitting
president in U.S. history. When Donald Trump first took
office in 2017, he was 70 years old and the oldest inaugurated
president in U.S. history. This year, at 78 years old, he
once again set that record. To put these two men's ages in
context, Bill Clinton, who was inaugurated 32 years ago in
1993, is still younger than both of them.
Kamala Harris, who seemed remarkably young when compared
to Biden and Trump, is still 60 years old, which is almost a
decade older than the average European leader.
Last year, when the 73 year old former British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown was asked if he would make a political comeback,
he joked that he was too old to be a British politician but too
young to be an American. 1 European countries have some of
the smallest age gaps between their leaders and their
populations. Iceland's Prime Minister is 36
years old. France and Denmark have 47 year
old leaders. European Heads of Government
have in fact been getting younger on average since the
early 1980s. Americans have found themselves
being given the choice of increasingly old and unpopular
presidential candidates to choose from in recent years.
It's not just presidents either though.
Up until last year, America's most powerful legislative role
was held by the 82 year old Nancy Pelosi, who was the oldest
ever Speaker of the House. At the same time, the Senate
Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, was 82 years old as
well. While an argument can be made
that with age comes wisdom, age can also slow our physical and
mental abilities. In December, an elderly Texas
member of Congress who had been missing from the capital for six
months was found to be living in a retirement community that
specializes in memory care. Her family acknowledged that she
had exhibited possible signs of dementia.
According to the Wall Street Journal, not only do half of the
world's population live in countries where the leader is
over 70 years old, but leaders today, on average are 40 years
older than the populations that they govern.
That is a big difference. The mental and physical fitness
of our aging political leaders came under increased scrutiny
during the US presidential debates last year when Joe
Bidens poor performance fueled concerns in his own party that
at age 81, he was no longer up to the task of leading the
country for another four years. In 2023, American voters were
both horrified and concerned to see Mitch McConnell freeze up
for more than 30 seconds while answering reporters questions
before being guided away by AIDS.
This happened twice within a month, and some newspapers said
that the freezing spells might have been caused by either
Parkinson's disease or a traumatic injury from a fall he
had suffered earlier that year. I wonder if it was just driven
by a desire to avoid being accused of being woke.
We'll never know. Dianne Feinstein, who died in
office at the age of 90, spent the last few years of her life
clinging to her Senate seat despite serious concerns about
her mental fitness and clear signs of cognitive decline.
Concerns over the age of politicians are about more than
just their cognitive abilities. They're about their ability to
connect with and represent younger generations and to
understand the issues that matter most to them.
Three issues that highlight the intergenerational conflicts in
recent years are that the young are more worried about the
environment than the old are. Young British voters were in
favour of staying in the EU but were outvoted by the old During
the Brexit referendum and during the pandemic, restrictions were
imposed on children and young adults to protect the elderly.
It could be argued that the age of our leaders is entirely
irrelevant. What matters is where they stand
on important policy issues. After all, older politicians can
be expected to take the needs of the young into account as they
care about the welfare of their children and grandchildren.
German academics found, after analysing 24 years of voting
behaviour in Bavaria, that old and young elected officials had
very different policy priorities.
Young councillors on average allocated more funding to social
spending, in particular to public childcare.
A similar study in Japan found that municipalities with young
mayors spent more on welfare for young families.
While politicians might mean well, maybe it's just natural to
make decisions that work best for people like you.
There are a few factors that explain America's gerontocracy,
where for the last eight years we've seen the oldest presidents
in history. And despite the fact that 39% of
voting age Americans are under the age of 40, only 8% of US
legislators in the House of Representatives are, which is
down from 22% and in 1981. The most obvious reason for
aging politicians is the increase in life expectancy,
particularly amongst wealthy Americans.
When you combine this with the decline in birth rates, it means
that leaders on average are getting older, much like the
populations they govern. Before running for president,
most candidates start out as congressmen, senators,
governors, or in recent years, game show hosts.
The fact that these feeder roles are all ageing means that the
only people qualified to run for president are quite old too.
While this might explain why elected officials are getting
older on average, it doesn't explain politicians like
Feinstein, McConnell, and Biden clinging on to office well into
their 80s while showing signs of cognitive decline.
And it doesn't really explain why roughly 1/4 of Congress is
made-up of members who are over 70 years old.
If voters want to elect the elderly, they should be able to.
But most Americans, it seems, don't really get a choice.
Congressional elections have grown less and less competitive
over time. In recent years, most House
races have been won by A10 point margin or higher.
According to Vox. In 2018, only 44 out of the 435
congressional districts were considered toss ups, and in
20/22 it was even lower with just 36 House elections being
considered competitive. That year, 98% of incumbents won
re election. The incumbent re election rate
in the House of Representatives, you might be surprised to hear,
has never fallen below 85% over the last 60 years.
What this tells you is that the only competitive campaign most
U.S. politicians have ever run in their entire political
careers was their first primary. After that, their seats are
safe, according to a paper from the Brookings Institute.
Journalists tend to ignore political primaries, But
primaries, they say, are key to understanding factions in
American political parties. As competition declined over the
years, the average age of congressional members rose.
So what's causing this decline in competitiveness?
Well, incumbents have a huge advantage in the two party US
system as incumbents are well known and have access to big
donor bases. They've strong relationships in
both Washington and in their home states.
They've experienced staff who know how to run a campaign, and
they have name recognition. Over time, it's become more and
more expensive to run an election campaign, and
incumbents are simply better able to raise the sums of money
necessary. This is the case in countries
like Japan and South Korea too, and for that reason their
governments have been aging, just like in the United States.
Two big advantages for incumbent politicians in the United States
are the increased polarization of American voters, where they
vote down party lines no matter what, and gerrymandering, where
lawmakers draw up congressional districts to benefit one party
or the other. Another reason that reduces the
influence of young voters is that while they might have
strong political opinions, they often don't vote.
In a survey across 33 countries, 44% of young adults between the
ages of 18 and 29 said that they always voted, compared to 60% of
the entire population. Studies do show, however, the
young voters are more likely to vote in elections when a young
candidate is running against an older 1.
Otherwise they're simply less interested.
Every democracy around the world sets a minimum age for holding
office. In France, once you're 18 you
can run for president, while in Italy you have to be at least
50, even though the role of president in Italy is mostly
ceremonial. All of the age limits, however,
are minimums. No country sets an upper age
limit for high office. The 2023 poll showed that nearly
3/4 of Americans favour an age limit for elected officials,
with 77% saying that Biden and Trump are too old to serve
effectively. The Financial Times described
the age of U.S. politicians in 2023 as a challenge for
democracy. While an age limit could be
imposed in countries like the United States, where politicians
are sometimes showing symptoms of cognitive decline while in
office, a limit like this would just be papering over the
problem of uncompetitive elections rather than fixing the
root causes. Neuroscience and psychology show
the cognitive performance varies widely as people age.
While certain skills tend to decline, others, like vocabulary
skills, often improve. There's simply no hard line that
can be drawn based on signs saying that a person is too old
to do a good job in office or not.
Some people, known as super agers, have the cognitive
function of people many decades younger than themselves.
So how old is too old to lead is probably the wrong question.
Nikki Haley, who ran against Donald Trump for the Republican
nomination last year, has proposed requiring mental
competency tests for politicians over the age of 75, describing
the Senate as the most privileged nursing home in the
country. While many might agree with her,
with six in 10 Americans telling a polling company that they were
very or somewhat concerned that members of Congress are too old
to represent the American people, the concept is still
highly controversial and politicized.
Donald Trump famously boasted that he had aced a cognitive
test back in 2018, with questions that included
identifying animal shapes that progressively got harder and had
some very difficult math problems.
And the doctors? Were they said very few people
can do that very few people get that you understand it's it's
not that easy the. Test he took, which you can look
up online, was the Montreal Cognitive Assessment which has
30 questions and his design and to take 10 minutes to complete.
Questions include drawing a clock, copying a picture of a
cube, identifying pictures of animals, and repeating a series
of four words like. A memory question.
It's like you'll go person, woman, man, camera, TV.
So they say, could you repeat that?
So I said yeah. So it's person, woman, man,
camera, TV. OK.
That's very good. If you get it in order, you get
extra points. They said nobody gets it in
order. It's actually not that easy, but
for me it was easy. This was not exactly an IQ test,
but he still boasted on the campaign trail that it was very
difficult and more importantly, that Biden probably couldn't
pass it. Now, while this is possibly
quite true, maybe we should set a slightly higher standard than
that. According to data from The
Economist, America has the least age representative government in
the OECD, where the same generation, the baby boomers,
have dominated politics for more than 30 years.
Pew Research shows that older Americans are most concerned
with issues like immigration, crime, and a decline in moral
values, while young Americans are more worried about housing
affordability, job prospects, affordable health care, and the
environment. It might be the case that the
institutions of government that were developed when most people
died by the age of 60 are not well suited to the modern world,
but the reality today is that politicians are holding onto
seats as long as they can. Thanks for tuning into this
week's podcast, with particular thanks to my supporters on
Patreon whose financial support makes this all work.
Have a great week and talk to you again soon.
Bye.