“We have a sclerotic gerontocracy,” posted then-48-year-old Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) back in 2024. Gerontocracy means rule by the old. And we Americans certainly are dominated by a cadre of elderly politicians. The U.S. Senate has the oldest average age of members for any directly elected upper legislative chamber in the world, according to the latest data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
The fact that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) has been hospitalized for nearly a month proves Khanna’s point. The 84-year-old legislator suffered a serious health emergency and was hauled away in an ambulance from his Washington, D.C., residence on June 14. In his absence, already-feckless Congress is even more unproductive. Legislation proposed by the Senate’s Republican leadership has remained stalled since McConnell’s vote is necessary for its passage.
While the former Senate Majority Leader may not be dead yet, bear in mind that eight of the 16 members of Congress who died in office since 2020 were over age 75. Most notoriously, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) tottered along for years before dying at age 90 in 2023. The average age of U.S. senators is now around 65, with 10 members aged 79 and older.
Gerontocracy is demonstrably harmful for economic growth. As “a direct consequence of the obsolescence of their personal human capital,” aged elites fail to “seize the opportunity offered by new technologies and to implement the best choice for the economy as a whole,” according to a 2017 study in the Journal of Applied Economics.
In a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, 79 percent of Americans favored setting maximum age limits for federal elected officials. In another Pew poll, only 3 percent of Americans favored having presidents in their 70s or older. Yet here we are.
See my May 2025 Reason article, “Can America Get Out of the Gerontocracy Trap?” where I examined the problems and possible solutions to our sclerotic gerontocracy.
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