Old-igarchy: How the Elderly Conquered American Power

In the following excerpt, Derek talks to Samuel Moyn about why gerontocracy is a real issue in the U.S.

Derek Thompson: In your new book, you present a range of statistics and facts to prove the thesis that elderly people in America today are hoarding wealth and power. Before we dig into some of these sectors and domains where you think gerontocracy’s bite is sharpest, I want you to pick three statistics that you think should change our minds or concretize our certainty that gerontocracy is a problem in America today.

Samuel Moyn: Well, so I do try to gather together a lot of receipts, few of which I generated myself but that I think haven’t been presented in one place. Since a lot of folks already, since 2024, are obsessed by our politicians and their age, I tried to shift the discussion a bit toward these other domains, and that’s where my statistics come from for right now.

The first is elections. It turns out that the age of voters is really high in the United States. We calculated that the median age is 52 outside presidential elections, 55 or 56, and in some primaries as high as over 70. So that’s the first statistic.

The second comes from the big domain of gerontocracy that I associate with wealth in its various forms. And since, as an abundance bro, I know you’re obsessed with housing, and I am too, I’m going to cite the stats on that, which are, I think, pretty staggering.

And so the group most likely to own a home, and it’s at over 80 percent, is the 70-74 age bracket. And the second-highest rate is the age group next higher than that. And then, as my last two and a half statistics, I’ll give you the fact that the median homebuyer by age has leapt 20 years lately, from barely 30 years old in 1981 to 53 in 2022.

Thompson: So American voters are old; American homeowners are old. Why isn’t this story as simple as American power is aging and Americans are aging? And these are just the same stories. Americans are living longer, period, and that’s the entire story of gerontocracy. Why isn’t the book’s thesis as simple as that?

Moyn: Because I think it’s just slightly more complicated. I mean, that is a big part of the thesis, and I do want to present the facts about the extension of life, just how far it’s gone in spite of a slight correction during the pandemic. And of course, it’s natural to then assume that everyone will be getting older, and therefore everything about everyone will reflect this fact.

But I think it’s worse than just what you would expect, because when you accrete power, you’re able to increase your gains once your power’s entrenched. And I think that the level of exclusion by age is just much worse than you would expect just, let’s say naturally, from the increase in age.

And so the point of the statistics and the point of the overall story they’re driving is that I think we’re not just an aging society; we’re a gerontocratic one, which means that power has accreted even more than is fair to those who have aged.

Thompson: I want to zoom in on several industries and sectors. Perhaps let’s start close to home, in the world of academia. In the last 20 years, The Harvard Crimson reported, the share of tenured Harvard professors who are still working after they turn 74 has increased from 3 percent at the beginning of this century to 43 percent. That is just unbelievable.

And it goes to a very important point which you just made, which is that it’s not as if longevity among Harvard professors increased by a factor of 13 in the last 20 years. Instead, the share of tenured professors at Harvard still working after 74 increased by a factor of 12, 13. I wonder, is this something that you’ve seen at Yale or Yale Law School as well, this sort of relatively sudden increase among professors and maybe even administrators with power in their 70s and 80s?

Moyn: Oh, to a huge extent. And inspired by that Harvard Crimson story, which was pioneering, I actually did the research on not Yale alone but Yale Law. And really, the results were, I think, stunning. Yale Law, until recently, at least, was ranked no. 1. And it really achieved its reputation first in the 1930s, when it was very closely connected to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. And then in the 1980s, it became something like the theory school for elite intellectuals, as well as folks who wanted to launch themselves into power.

And right or wrong, what was true at both of those moments of great importance for the school was that the faculty average age was in the 40s. Now, it’s pushing 60. And where at those earlier dates, there was essentially no one in their 70s and definitely no one in their 80s, now, we’re talking about almost 20 percent of the faculty in that cohort. And I’ve lived it. I mean, I’m getting old myself. But I’m still still a young’un. I’m below the average age of the Yale Law faculty at 54 years old, which is outrageous, honestly. But what’s more important is that it’s an old folks home. Literally, the easier the job—and I’ve noticed this in law schools—the more older faculty who have no incentive to leave stay on indefinitely.

This excerpt has been edited and condensed.

Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Samuel Moyn
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman