The age-old issue of American politics

The first presidential debate laid bare the limits of age; so should candidates face age limits?

Note: the following is an extended version of my recent article in The Conversation, a publication that you should really subscribe to! They feature academic authors talking about the news in plain language, which is sometimes tough for us academics to do well.

In the meantime, enjoy this slightly longer, slightly sassier version of my article!

---

I don’t know if you noticed, but Joe Biden did not give the most stellar performance during the first presidential debate with Donald Trump.

The main culprit — at least according to many major press outlets and Democratic officials who have since called on Biden to drop out — was his age. His speech was halting, his voice was hoarse, and his movements simply exude extreme age. Until a couple of weeks ago, Biden’s age was apparent, but not apparently debilitating; aides and colleagues, including leading Republicans, have cited Biden’s age as purely an image or optics problem. But more than a few reports have surfaced in the last week walking these observations back, with comments from former administration officials that Biden’s physical and mental decline has quickened considerably over the past six months.

The world already has a wide enough variety of takes about whether Biden should stay in or get out of the race. As with many sensitive issues like this, I think the only sensible path forward for the Democrats, and for the country, probably involves equal doses of humility and open-mindedness. One of our major political parties has already descended into a cult of personality where disagreement and debate are not tolerated; we don’t need a second.

But Biden, of course, is not the only old politician in the United States. His opponent, for example, is only a few years younger, and shows his age in very different, and I would argue far more alarming, ways. The age issue has maybe been the most pronounced in an institution I’m a little more qualified to discuss: the U.S. Congress.

A number of high-profile figures like Sen. Mitch McConnell and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein have made headlines the past few years with very public lapses or freeze-ups that have been attributed to their advanced age. But zooming out beyond any one politician reveals the broader problem: a major and sustained generational imbalance in Congress. Nearly 20% of the House and Senate is 70 or older, compared to about 6% who are under 40.

But what exactly explains why Congress is so old? Does age really matter in politics? And what, if anything, could help even things out between the generations?

Some core causes

Congress’s advanced age has has a variety of causes, and some of them are unavoidable.

First, if it feels like Congress just keeps getting older over time, it’s because Americans are, too. According to historical data on members of Congress, the average House member’s age is up 10% since 1960 – 58, up from 52. A similar increase happened in the Senate, with the average age 63, up from 57. But the average American’s life expectancy – 79, up from 70 – is up by even more during this time, around 13%. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median American age is up by even more during that time, over 30%, from 30 up to 39. In other words, Americans are living longer, so members of Congress are serving for longer.

Average ages of members of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, alongside the average American life expectancy, 1960-2020.

Another purely mathematical reason is that the U.S. Constitution enforces an age floor. Members of the House must be at least 25 years old by the time they take office; senators must be 30. If the average congressional ages cited earlier seem high, it’s partly thanks to some basic math: an average gets much higher when you take out the lowest numbers. So there’s also some artificial age inflation going on here, too.

Young candidates are hard to find

But natural trends and constitutional requirements don’t fully explain why otherwise-qualified younger generations are so underrepresented in Congress.

One big additional reason is that younger potential candidates for Congress face a steeper climb and must make bigger sacrifices than older candidates do.

For example, even if they are interested in running for Congress, Americans in their 20s and 30s just haven’t had as much opportunity to establish themselves in secure careers as older generations have. This means less access to the political networks and connections that political science research says are crucial to success in congressional campaigns. More importantly, this means less access to money and potential donors.

Last year I spoke, alongside my star co-author and Substack author

Casey Burgat

, with Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost, the first Gen-Z member of Congress. In our conversation, he laid out why his success was the exception, and not the rule:

It’s really hard. The system is not created for young people to be running for office. That's part of the reason why my election was such a big deal is because we were able to push through it… Honestly, I put myself in financial ruin during my campaign. I have horrible credit because of it… If I would have lost, I'd be screwed right now. I’d be very screwed. And that's what keeps a lot from running for office.

In other words, it costs a ton of money to run for office, and successful campaigns require absolute devotion, even in districts where your party does really well. Dedicating yourself to a campaign, especially as a young person without huge amounts of accumulated wealth, is untenable for most people.

That's a year without salary. And so it puts people in a place where if you're already rich, that's not a big deal. You're fine. You have savings. And it makes it so young people can't run… This is part of the reason why we see the net worth of Congress continuing to rise is because these people are already rich when they get elected.

Young potential candidates also face a deficit of time, in addition to money. Your 20s and 30s usually contain more major life events and changes than later in life, like career transitions, geographic mobility, and starting a family. These things just aren’t very conducive to a full-time campaign schedule. By necessity, politics just takes up less space in young people’s lives, compared to older generations with more time, personal stability, and career and financial security.

The youngest member of Congress when he was first elected in 2022, Rep. Maxwell Frost is a Democrat from Florida. Jemal Countess/Getty Images

Meanwhile, older Americans with an interest in running for Congress enjoy a few key electoral advantages.

Advanced age brings with it longer political and professional careers; for voters, this can translate into proof of potential effectiveness as a member of Congress. In other words, older generations have had more time to prove their quality in the eyes of the voters. Younger candidates might seem unseasoned by comparison.

Political science has also established the difficulty of unseating current incumbents in Congress. Nearly all members of Congress who run for reelection end up winning. This so-called “incumbency advantage” obviously helps all sitting members of Congress, not just older members. But it does limit the number of open seats that are most likely to bring younger generations into Congress.

Are there solutions?

Although some of these factors are unavoidable, there are things that could be done to encourage young people to run for office. In our conversation, Frost suggested allowing candidates to draw more generous stipends from their own campaign funds to lessen the burden on younger, less financially viable candidates.

I just testified in front of the FEC. I'm trying to get them to expand candidate salaries, which I know a lot of people might hear and be like, ‘candidate salaries? That's so messed up!’ No, this is part of the reason people can't run for office is because you don't get paid to run for office… I'm hoping that my testimony helped, and we're trying to get them to expand that so that way people, out of the money they raise, can give themselves a stipend so they can, I don't know, eat and have a place to sleep while they run to better their community.

As Frost implies here, donor-funded stipends for political candidates is likely not the most popular idea in the world. It probably falls just ahead of increasing salaries for members of Congress (which, by the way, is also something we should do, but I’ll save that pitch for another day).

But probably the most commonly proposed solution has recently been put on display in North Dakota, whose voters approved a ballot initiative that would place an upper age limit on candidates for Congress from that state. If it survives likely court challenges, the law would bar anyone 81 or older from serving in Congress from North Dakota.

In a recent conversation I had with Celeste Headlee on Slate’s “Hear Me Out” podcast — and in a recent post in this space — I argued one of my main hobbyhorses in American politics, which is that term limits are a terrible idea. This reform would limit members of Congress to (for example) 8 years of service regardless of their age or how much their voters like them. Term limits would almost certainly make Congress less effective, and would cut short years of institutional memory that help a legislature function correctly.

Bonus Post: Term limits ain't it

I’m much more open to age limits, and they at least have some good historical precedent in Congress. As I just noted, we don’t let anyone younger than 25 serve in the House; anyone younger than 30 serve in the Senate; or anyone younger than 35 serve as president.¹

But they are far from a perfect solution. What people are really worried about — and this is certainly true in both Biden’s and Trump’s cases — is not really age itself. I guarantee you there are plenty of 85 year olds out there who would be far more vigorous, effective, and mentally acute members of Congress than many of the current set who are in their 50s or 60s. So, too, are there probably plenty of 24-year-olds we’re really missing out on because of the Constitution’s age floor. Then again, you have to draw the line somewhere, and the Constitution does.

The real issue appears to be cognitive ability and impairment. On both practical and ethical levels, that’s tricky to test for, and probably unconstitutional. We don’t, and shouldn’t, give voters cognitive or literacy tests (see Crow, Jim), and all else equal, I think it’s better for voters to sort out for themselves the qualifications they’re looking for in their representatives.

Yes, age matters

Of course, we only care about these reforms if we think age or generational balance in Congress is a goal worth achieving. So, is it? If the folks we elect are doing what we want and taking the positions we agree with, why does it matter how old they are?

Let’s think about it this way: Non-Hispanic White Americans account for 75% of voting members in the current Congress, which is quite a bit more than their 59% share of the U.S. population. The current Congress also has a record number of women, but that record is only about 30%, falling way short of the general population. Even if the policies coming out of Congress were perfect (and I think we know they’re not), would we say this is okay?

This is how Rep. Frost and others talk about the importance of generational balance in Congress for both representation and lawmaking:

This is really important because Gen Z and Millennials, we make up a third of the country. We're nowhere near a third of government.

Political science backs him up on this concern, and also speaks to another important way out of this imbalance. Seeing people who are “like us” in Congress or other offices helps us to feel properly represented, and to view our political institutions as more legitimate. When younger candidates find success, it encourages other young people to make the leap themselves, kicking off a virtuous cycle of representation.

But Frost says — and I couldn’t agree more — that this isn’t just an optics or image problem. We don’t need balanced representation just because it feels right or fair. It gives us obviously better policy outcomes, too:

I think it's important to keep this in mind because when you think about a representative body… you sit down at a table and you work through the future issues we don't know about yet and current ones. The purpose of that is, I always say that the description of my job is in the title, Representative. I'm there to represent my constituents. But you also want to have different lived experiences at that table so you can make the most informed and holistic policy decisions. When certain communities are not represented at that table, you miss a whole life experience.

Different groups of Americans face different types of issues, and have different types of concerns. White representatives can do their earnest best to advocate for Black constituents; so can male representatives for their female constituents. Many do, and all should. But even the best-intentioned representatives can have blind spots on issues of importance to these underrepresented groups; issues that can only be realized through lived experience. Young people are one such underrepresented group, and we shouldn’t pretend that they’re not.

1. Fun fact: in 1972, Joe Biden, at age 29, became the youngest person elected to the U.S. Senate in almost a half-century. Because he turned 30 before he was sworn in, he was constitutionally eligible for office.