Gerontocracy: The Sistemic Power of the Old
The data of how the world is run by the old, and a hopeful invitation.
In West Texas, the “Long Now” foundation is assembling a giant clock. With minimal maintainance, the clock will mark time for the next 10.000 years. Ten thousand years is about the age of modern civilization, so the clock will measure out a future of civilization equal to its past.
What will humankind look like in 10.000 years? What will be the state of social inequalities? Climate change? Immigration?
Politicians talk about these issues only in terms of years, or even months. The horizon doesn’t go beyond the next elections.
This lack of long-term thinking may be a matter of age.
Our institutions are designed by and for old people (often old men, white old men).
They are everywhere. How old is your president? Your high school teacher? The guy choosing how to invest your pension funds?
Baby boomers are the majority of heads of states, school principals, CEOs, editors of major newspapers, mayors.
When stakes are high you can bet there’s a baby boomer involved in the negotiation. They sit in the armchairs of the thousands of oval offices scattered through the globe where every little decision is made.
As power gets concentrated in the upper side of the population pyramid and older people make decisions, we are deprived of long-term thinking.
For human beings, lont-term thinking is crucial. We are re-acting beings. This means we are more likely to act in response to a threat than in prevention of it. If we don’t feel like we’re just about to succumb, we procrastinate.
That’s why you cram your studying the night before the exam, or you finally go to the dentist only when that tooth pain has become umbearable.
This happens if you lack long-term thinking. And a large body of research¹ contends that conservatism and intellectual stagnation kick in as you grow older.
How can we hope for innovation if those who have the power to promote it are too old to innovate? How can we hope to make the “ecological transition” if our society is run by old folks who will most likely be dead before climate change slaps us in the face?
This is gerontocracy in numbers
Even in a democracy, you have little direct power over your circumstancies.
What you can do is to vote for someone to represent you where decisions are made. In most cases, this is a parliamentarian.
The average age of parliamentarians in the world is 53. In contrast, the median age of the world population is 28.4 years.²
This means that our representatives are on average 25 years older than us.
Over 80 percent of parliamentarians are between 40 and 60 years of age.²
People in this age range — and their ideas — are extraordinarly over-represented. If you’re outside of that range, well, nobody is listening.
88+ years old make up only 0.2% of american population, but 2% of senators.
Half of italian senators are older than 60 years old.
Can we still call this “representation”?
The same applies to our leaders.
The average age of the heads of state of the permanent members of the UN Secutiry Council (Russia, France, UK, USA and China) is 68+44+79+57+69 / 5 = 63.4. And for the UK I’m not considering Queen Elizabeth but Boris Johnson, who at 57 is one of the youngest state leaders on the planet (can we call him young though?)
If we consider all the current members of the Security Council, the average age climbs up to 66.
Even in Africa, the youngest continent on Earth, gerontocracy holds its grip. There’s a huge age gap between the leaders and the led. In some countries, like Angola, 85% of the population was not born when their leader took office.
Gerontocracy has serious political consequences. Over-represanting the older strata of the population means sacrifying young ideas. Out with innovation and action, in with conservatism and torpidity.
One clear example is what happened with the Brexit referendum. If the younger percentiles of the population were to vote, the UK would be back in the EU.
Beyond politics
Gerontocracy goes beyond politics. The power of the old is sistemic: it controls all the top positions across different domains.
This capillarity allows it to perpetuate the status quo, because anywhere you look, older people are making decisions for you.
Their hegemony has even extended over the education system. And that’s a lot. Schools and universities are the places of innovation and creativity. It’s where gerontocracy can be defeated. But the air in the classroom is stuffy and the books are covered in dust:
- 37% of american university professors are older than 55, compared to only 23% of all U.S. workers. And the median age of U.S. professors is 7 years higher than the U.S. workforce.³
- In the UK, the percentage of academics aged 55 or older increased from 18.9% to 20.5% between 2004 and 2007. The proportion of those under 35 shrank from 25.9% to 25.2% in the same period.⁴
And when students are younger, the outlook is even more bleak.
- 60% of italian primary school teachers are aged 50 or above.⁵
- The average age of principals in secondary schools across OECD countries is 53.⁶
- And this is how old are high school teachers across the globe: https://data.oecd.org/chart/6C9H
An invitation
Gerontocracy is hardwired in our society, so much to seem ineludible. It’s inscribed in our regimes of recruitment, and there doesn’t seem to be any institutional way out of it.
One possibility we have is to let someone new in the system. Someone who has always been left out, but might have something to tell us. And this could alter the (un)balance of age representation.
Should 16 years old be allowed to vote?
Isn’t it too early?
Well, some say it’s even too late.
Maybe you already have an opinion. Maybe you’re still looking for one. Anyway, if you want to wrap your head around the debate on lowering the voting age, you can join us of the International Youth Think Tank live on Instagram on Saturday, 26/02 at 3 PM, CET.
We’ll talk with Teens for Democracy and Simona Mohamsson about this key issue that might unlock new ways to make future-proof decisions in a world that desperately needs long-term thinking.
If you’re interested, you can sign up here:
https://iythinktank.com/upcoming-events/is-it-time-we-lower-the-voting-age/
Sources
[1] Peltzman, S. (2019). Political Ideology over the Life Course. Public Choice: Analysis of Collective Decision-Making eJournal.
[2] https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/publications/Global Parliamentary Report.
[3] McChesney, Jasper, & Bichsel, Jacqueline. (2020, January). The Aging of Tenure-Track Faculty in Higher Education: Implications for Succession and Diversity (Research Report).
[5] OECD (2022), Teachers by age (indicator). doi: 10.1787/93af1f9d-en
[6] OECD (2022), School principals (indicator). doi: 10.1787/206df7b1-en
