Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

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.

62