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that_jedi_girl t1_iqmea69 wrote

This is so much better than your original. Definitely shows that we're not in a new situation, without telling a false story about how there have been relatively drastic changes in that age gap since the 60s.

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JolietJakeLebowski OP t1_iqmf7th wrote

I dunno about 'false': an 8-year, 25% drop in the 13 years between '68-'81 is still pretty drastic. But in hindsight I do agree with you guys that this graph is much better (and more representative) than the old one.

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that_jedi_girl t1_iqmfni3 wrote

Fair! I think we have different definitions of relatively drastic here. This shows a quick 25% drop in a way that I can immeadiately recognize, instead of initially thinking it's closer to 100% before I take in all the labels and their meaning.

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JolietJakeLebowski OP t1_iqmgiel wrote

Yep, in hindsight I agree this one is much clearer and faster to read than the old one.

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Waitwhonow t1_iqndd8n wrote

Insight from the chart!!

What would be fascinating to see the population growth chart added year as well.

Based on what is being shown here- the median age dropped from the mid 60s to the 80s

So that ‘ may’ mean that during the hippie revolution/the 60s a lot of fucking was done, which drastically increased the number of people in the country( or even immigration changes?!?) and that dropped the median age by quite a lot( and remained constant since then)

But also means that more ‘younger’ people started joining the congress due to all the various movements back then( civil rights/women rights etc) which dropped the average age of the senate.

But, in the 80s, younger people just stopped joining the senate( in the same pace lt did in the 60s/70s) and the average age started creeping up again- to its maximum today.

Maybe because inflation and war forced the younger generation( of the 80s) to just give it up and join the workforce- rather than the congress.

And started electing older folks into office ( aka Reagen and republicans)

Tldr: it looks like boomers just gave up the ‘fight’ after all the drugs and rock and roll, and let the ‘ older generation’ handle it again, and now that they are the ‘older generation’ they dont want to give up the power( coupled with a lack of participation by millennials for myriad of reasons)

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MarleyandtheWhalers t1_iqmmde6 wrote

Learning that I would be above the median age in America at age 30 in 1982 hit me like a truck

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hucareshokiesrul t1_iqmzt7b wrote

Currently, the world median age is 31.

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857477458 t1_iqnheul wrote

Some poor countries in Africa have median ages in the TEENS.

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hey_there_kitty_cat t1_iqnyo0c wrote

I'm just surprised median age has stayed relatively stable. Guess we're finding ways to keep people alive as fast for oldies and babies at the same rate, so banging and dying at a relative equilibrium for the moment. That's pretty cool.

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CalgaryChris77 t1_iqoryu7 wrote

Are you reading this graph wrong? The median age is climbing consistently for over 50 years.

Compared to other western countries it’s been a less steep climb though.

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hey_there_kitty_cat t1_iqpkowv wrote

I meant the main line that was the point of the post, median difference. And how the other lines go up, but the difference is relatively similar, hence more babies surviving and old people surviving, so we going to the moon!

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Bayoris t1_iqqk5ub wrote

That line represents the age difference between the median person and median senator. You seem to have interpreted it as the difference between old people and babies.

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hey_there_kitty_cat t1_iqqo926 wrote

I... what you're saying is right, but I feel like we're saying the same thing on completely different levels. Old people and babies are consistently living longer now, people together are living longer. Hence upward trends of living, but yet the age gap of average age and senator age is staying pretty stable. That's pretty interesting, although I guess we're way beyond the actual post at this point.

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eh17368 t1_iqutbtp wrote

Largely because of so many young immigrants the US receives

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JasonKim100 t1_iqp0hlh wrote

The difference is staying relatively stable because the median age for both senators and the US population are rising.

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JolietJakeLebowski OP t1_iqmaqzc wrote

Following feedback on my previous post here I decided to upload a (hopefully) more readable version using the same data.

I saw u/SandiePandleton's post on the average age of Senators over time, and I couldn't help but wonder: have Senators gotten older, or has the US population just gotten older?

As you can see, despite appearances 2022 is really not far out of the ordinary: the US Senate has always been a bunch of old geezers. Outliers are 1968, when the average senator was more than twice the age of the average American (27.3 vs 59.3), and 1981, when the difference was 'only' 24 years.

Since I had already done most of the work out of curiosity, I figured I'd clean up the graph a bit and post it for others like me.

Source:

  1. Senator average age: u/SandiePandleton's earlier post, sources linked there.
  2. US median age: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). World Population Prospects 2022, Online Edition.

Tool:

LibreOffice Calc.

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ShelfordPrefect t1_iqmgs9w wrote

Just thinking about demographics, is the average age dip in the late 60s the baby boomers reaching adulthood and having children, skewing the population young?

Likewise the dip in average senator age around 1980 would be baby boomers reaching their 30s and being eligible for the senate?

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TaliesinMerlin t1_iqml5t8 wrote

It could be a factor. The birth rate was continuously dropping in the late 1960s though, and the death rate was at a high in 1968, which may have also cut into the median. Reductions in death rate in the 1970s, along with reductions in birth rate, may have meant an older median.

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Bluefoxcrush t1_iqpnnjm wrote

It certainly looks like once the Boomers took office, they never left.

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Kudd53 t1_iqmiled wrote

I think you should eliminate minors when counting population because they can't be senators

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TaliesinMerlin t1_iqmk6lh wrote

>I think you should eliminate minors

Well, that escalated quickly. /s

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Winjin t1_iqrl73g wrote

That's very carbon positive, you know.

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Ares1935 t1_iqmjlh3 wrote

Not just minors, it 30 for the house and 35 for senate I think.

If you take the average age of americans in that category only, the 2 lines might be on top of each other.

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JolietJakeLebowski OP t1_iqmnzfc wrote

Good idea, I might reupload with that line if I can find the data. Also, it's 25 and 30 (US Constitution Article 1, Sections 2 and 3).

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Kudd53 t1_iqmy7wo wrote

sorry for that I'm not from USA

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TimeIsPower t1_iqpk3nm wrote

It's 25 for the House, 30 for the Senate, and 35 for the presidency.

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MarkDoner t1_iqn40lu wrote

Or maybe a chart comparing the average age of registered voters vs. senators

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Ralwus t1_iqnzfha wrote

Agreed. Need another line showing US population without the ages too young for senate to see the real difference.

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bareboneschicken t1_iqosynt wrote

If you do that, you have to eliminate everyone under 30 because they can't be senators.

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timodreynolds t1_iqmm68l wrote

>I think you should eliminate minors when counting population because they can't be senators

Maybe 18 and younger wont have laws made that impact them? Is that what you're saying?

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Kudd53 t1_iqmy51t wrote

Well I don't see many people complaining that a 16 year old can't be a senator and I think that it's ok to limit that because in those ages we are still going through maturation and brain development so a senator below 25 (Iirc that's when brain maturation finishes) shouldn't exist because they could be inconsistent with their behaviour and ideology.

The real reason for someone to be worried about senator Vs normal people age is that even though a 40 year old can legally be a senator, socially we can see we decide to have way older senators and that's not a good representation of the population.

It wouldn't make sense to complain about senator age average not being close to young people if it's obviously not even possible for the average senator age to be lower than the age in which we are allowed to advocate for senator.

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Prestigious-Owl165 t1_iqmmf4g wrote

Yeah there's no reason to do that lol. This just shows that we've always been governed by people who are out of touch with most of us, and this isn't a new problem. Doesn't mean it's not a problem

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Winjin t1_iqrlf9q wrote

Hey I'm not out of touch with the young! I'm still young and hip, yo, yo, snowboard, floppy! Ow, my hip.

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teddwhy t1_iqmwho8 wrote

On graphs like this, why is the median often used over the mean? What would the difference be in this context?

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Brayzure t1_iqn4w0q wrote

To my understanding, it's because in data sets like these, median is usually closer to what we want. If you had a room with 9 infants and 1 hundred year old person, it's not helpful to say the average age of a person in that room is 10. It's usually more helpful to say the median age is 0, since most people in that room are newborns. Mean is affected by outliers, median is not.

In reality the difference between mean and median for an entire country is minor, but the point is that the median is closer to what we want. Median also gives us a useful data point, the age where half of all people are older than that age, and half are younger. Mean age is less useful.

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BoomZhakaLaka t1_iqpzb8w wrote

Median gives you the 50th percentile, what we intuitively would consider "an average person". For instance, the average adult's net wealth in the US is around $600k, but that's actually the 80th percentile. A median adult's wealth in the US (what we would intuitively think of as an "average person"), the 50th percentile, is closer to $100k (little variation depending on whose survey you use). The difference between mean and median shows just how unequal the distribution of wealth is.

Not intentionally choosing controversy here - I've limited my statements to just plain facts, not opinions.

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Bjarki56 t1_iqmb01r wrote

Makes sense since the word senator is derived from the Latin, “senex” meaning old man. (Also the word senior).

They are the “elders” and are thus considered wiser.

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JolietJakeLebowski OP t1_iqmegxm wrote

Yep, the idea was always to have Senators be slightly older than Representatives. Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist no. 62:

>The qualifications proposed for senators, as distinguished from those of representatives, consist in a more advanced age [...] A senator must be thirty years of age at least; as a representative must be twenty-five. [...] The propriety of these distinctions is explained by the nature of the senatorial trust, which, requiring greater extent of information and stability of character, requires at the same time that the senator should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages [...]

Although I'm not sure if Hamilton had quite these ages in mind. I did some quick Wiki-searching and put the dates of birth of all the first Senators in LibreOffice, and found out that the median age of the 1789 Senate was only 47.47 years.

I cannot find a clear value for median age in 1789, but based on what little I've found, the median age certainly wasn't 20 so the age difference between Senators and the general population was a lot lower at the first Senate meeting.

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rewindbloopers t1_iqmfdpe wrote

Good points! Taking into account healthcare access, basic life expectancy, 47 years old (in ~1800) probably corresponds to modern day 65 years old or so (just a guess). The point is that Senators were pretty old back in the Formation Era as well.

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Rear-gunner t1_iqmx24l wrote

It is a stunner in this chart, I thought that the US Senators were getting older than the US population.

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New_Evening_2845 t1_iqo1swo wrote

I'm curious: are most of them that old because one has to climb up the political ladder to be a senator? Are most senators incumbents?

If serving as senator is the crowning achievement of a long career in politics, it makes sense that they'd all be geezers.

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northgrave t1_iqptymv wrote

That is probably at least partially right. Most Senators have previous government experience, either directly or relatedly, and many made the jump from the House (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_senators).

In an imperfect system, this is probably a reasonable situation. Having people with little to no knowledge of how government agencies work making decisions about them is probably not the best idea. This is not to say that this experience is always put to the best use, but the alternative is to pick people without any track record.

A second factor is that incumbents are hard to displace, so at 6 year terms, you win a few elections and it's decades in office. If you start at 50, three terms gets you to age 68. And many serve far more than that (https://www.senate.gov/senators/longest_serving_senators.htm - Bold indicates still serving). The senate certainly is not likely to implement term limits on themselves.

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SenecatheEldest t1_iqpxjgv wrote

There are 100 senators for a country of 330 million. The Upper House of Congress is more prestigious than the lower one.

In fact, unless you plan to run for President or are selected as VP on a ticket, a Senator is the highest political office one can hold in the US government.

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Gilchester t1_iqp7f5f wrote

What is it if you do median age of voters?

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[deleted] t1_iqmmbmu wrote

[deleted]

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JolietJakeLebowski OP t1_iqmnf9q wrote

The main thing that I would infer here is that while Senators in 2022 are older than they used to be, so is the general population. Proportionately, the current Senate isn't any less representative with regards to age than they were in the '50s and '60s.

I'm not implying anything else with this data really. In another comment I explain that the Senate was always intended to be a bit older than the House, although the Founders probably did not anticipate these kinds of ages (the median age of the first Senate was 47.5 years).

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JeromePowellsEarhair t1_iqmp2yl wrote

This is awesome OP! I had never thought about the data this way and it’s very readable and well presented!

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EGarrett t1_iqn3qbb wrote

And chess grandmasters peak in their 20's and 30's, in case you think it's a matter of intelligence or knowledge.

A gross example of the problems with no term limits.

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villanymester t1_iqnfanu wrote

Ao rare to see some MATLAB plots here. Glad to see this post!

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Low-Fold-1123 t1_iqnha71 wrote

Honestly being a senator seems like a great post retirement career. Show up when you want and watch the news, make sure you don’t do anything, walk around like you did something, and get great stock tips.

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GeneReddit123 t1_iqnz3ay wrote

In Ancient Rome, senators were ranked based on their seniority, which was not just how long they've been in the Senate, but what was their highest office before entering the senate. Ex-consuls and ex-praetors were always ranked higher than former holders of lower offices.

Only the highest ranks had the right to introduce bills, and the order of public speaking was always based on seniority. That means that the few most senior senators always had control of the agenda, and usually persuaded enough senators to support their bill that the rest never had an opportunity to speak or influence anything. The rest of the senators became known as the "strollers", because their only job was to stroll to one side of the senate floor or the other, based on whether they were for or against a bill.

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monalisasnipples t1_iqnlneu wrote

The difference in age in 1968 make sense after all the fucking wars we were in up to that point. All the young men died

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Alexstarfire t1_iqnlps2 wrote

What is the point of this? I expect there to be a huge gap in these two values because with the median age of the country you're including a lot of babies and kids while you must be >30 y/o to be a senator.

It's a nice graph but the information seems pretty useless to me.

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Kered13 t1_iqoi1o8 wrote

There was a graph yesterday showing the average age of Senators over time, which in particular showed that Senators have gotten a lot older in the last 50 years. This is essentially showing that the average age of the Senate is basically just following general demographic trends in the US.

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HPmoni t1_iqnp0s6 wrote

Should be noted that CEOs are much better compensated now than ever before. Successful people don't want to go into government.

Biden is super old.

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daedelous t1_iqns3xl wrote

While Congress is far too old, I’m not sure I want them to be only a few years out of college, either. A nice wide range would be nice, maybe 30-60 primarily.

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FissionFire111 t1_iqo4egi wrote

You’ll be happy to know then that it is written in the Constitution that Senators must be at least 30 years old to be elected and a Representative must be at least 25 year old. Also the President must be at least 35. No worries about young kids fresh out of school being elected without a Constitutional amendment.

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Rocktamus1 t1_iqnvuwx wrote

Fuck, I’m at the us MEDIAN age?!? At some point everything will be my generations fault!

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artaig t1_iqnvzfm wrote

"Senator", meaning the "elder one". I don't want someone whose balls haven't drop yet giving his opinion about anything.

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DrSOGU t1_iqo0pgu wrote

Please compare with voting population. Should become even clearer.

Or directly with boomer ages (as soon as they could vote, median age of Senators decreased, while the past two decades they became increasingly geriatric).

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FissionFire111 t1_iqo3h1n wrote

Graph doesn’t really mean much considering that you can’t be a Senator unless you are at least 30 (per the Constitution) and the median age of the population will include everyone not even eligible to serve in the Senate (newborn to 29). Make more sense to do a median age of 30+ year old only vs. median Senator age.

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mabhatter t1_iqo7r35 wrote

Here's a really good article with more visualization of the differences. You can see how the Silent generation stayed a little longer, but the Boomers started in the Senate earlier and basically still push out GenX ... which got a late start and still are underrepresented. Even Millennials are on the board now. It took ten years between Silent and Boomers being represented. It's sixteen years more before GenX is represented... and only five before Millennials are starting to show up in the Senate. GenX is the 42-57 year olds that just are wiped off the board.

https://blog.datawrapper.de/age-of-us-senators-charts/

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Tough_Armadillo7379 t1_iqpnwyd wrote

This doesn’t look very representative to me. Why vote for them?

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New_Evening_2845 t1_iqqvlz8 wrote

Most senate races are like the last presidential race. It's a choice between two very old men.

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player89283517 t1_iqpxc50 wrote

Why did median age decline so much in 1950-1970? Is that because of baby boomers?

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ARandomPerson380 t1_iqq0926 wrote

Very interesting, really puts a new perspective on the whole issue

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[deleted] t1_iqmq5rp wrote

[deleted]

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JolietJakeLebowski OP t1_iqmrmbg wrote

That's the thing though. The age gap isn't really increasing. All Americans are getting older about proportionally with the Senate.

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Less-Dragonfruit-294 t1_iqn0nj5 wrote

You’re out of touch and out of time. You know the rules and so do I! Now get the fuck out and if you hit your head out the door I’ll ask you simply annie are you okay? Songs poorly placed together yes, but still it’s a way to show my distain for the massive difference of those in power and those grounded in reality.

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Tvmouth t1_iqn0v8o wrote

Can't wait till the millennials are on their 40-year death bed and qualified to ruin the lives of everyone else. That's going to be a fun few decades!

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zebulon99 t1_iqmmjfr wrote

Ok, this shows that there are just that many boomers

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Kim_Thomas t1_iqn7whj wrote

Both houses of Congress (especially the Senate) & let’s not forget the SCOTUS are completely corrupt & fully compromised. I don’t care what filth is spewing from Moscow Mitch McConnell’s or Sam Alito’s fetid, stinking pie holes either. They’re all “Scump lovers.”

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