The Nation - In an article published earlier this year in the Journal of Public Economics, the political scientists Adam Bonica and Jacob M. Grumbach document that gerontocracy is a problem that intertwines both the political elite and the donor class in the United States. The average American is roughly 39 years old, the average voter 47, and the average member of Congress 57.5. But the age of the average donor surpasses even that. As Bonica and Grumbach note that
if we weight donors by dollar amounts, we find that the average dollar came from a 64-year-old (i.e., the mean dollar-weighted age of donors is 63.9). The median dollar came from a 66-year-old. We also find that only 9% of contribution dollars came from donors who are 40 years old or younger.
In other words, the typical donor is nearly 20 years older than the typical voter.
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