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.