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Minnesota’s legislators are getting older.
Yeah, yeah — we all are getting older, but in this case we’re not just talking about individual members of the Legislature. Rather, the average age of the Legislature as a whole has been going up.
The legislature’s been on an aging trajectory since at least 1971: whereas the average age in the House at the end of the Legislative Session that year was 45, it was 55 by the end of the 2017 session. The average senator in 1971 was 47; today, 58.
That’s all according to data from librarians at the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. (A caveat: the Legislative Reference Library has birthdays, and therefore ages, for most, but not all legislators.)
Older than average
While the average Minnesotan is 47, the average Minnesota legislator is 57, according to a study by the National Conference of State Legislatures on the demographics of legislators in all 50 states that used data from 2015.
It’s common for lawmakers to be older, on average, than the populations they represent, wrote John Mahoney, a policy associate at the NCSL’s Center for Legislative Strengthening, in an email.
Across the U.S., the NCSL found that the average age of state lawmakers in 2015 was 56, compared to 47 for the U.S. population.
That would put the average lawmaker firmly in the baby boomer generation, which the NCSL defined as being born between 1946 and 1964. This generation is the most overrepresented in the Minnesota legislature, making up 64 percent of legislators compared to 30 percent of the state’s population. Millennials — born between 1981 and 1997 — were the most underrepresented, making up 30 percent of the population and just 4 percent of the legislature (a small share of millennials weren’t yet 21 at the time the data were collected, the minimum age to serve in the Minnesota legislature).
Given the share of the population boomers represent in Minnesota, and the fact that legislators skew older than the populations they represent, it doesn’t come as a huge surprise that so many legislators are baby boomers.
Boomers are a huge generation and they make up a big part of the legislature. We don’t have the data to compare them to their predecessors, but as the large contingent of boomers inevitably eases out of the statehouse in the coming decades, it’s possible we’ll see the average age of lawmakers decline.
“The average age of legislators has always tended to be higher than other professions, so we would not expect it to drastically drop just because many baby boomers are retiring,” Mahoney wrote. “However … the average age in many states has generally been on the rise, and therefore it is likely that it will gradually fall — we are just not quite sure when and to what degree.”
Indeed, whereas the median age of Minnesotans has been on the rise: 37.1 years old in 2010 and 37.8 in 2016, it’s projected to go back down to 37 by 2020, according to Megan Dayton, senior projections demographer at the Minnesota State Demographic Center.
A cultural shift?
Younger members may make up a smaller share of Minnesota lawmakers, but in some ways, they seem to be driving much of the dialogue at the statehouse in the last couple years — whether on Sunday sales or sexual harassment — leaving some wondering if there’s a cultural shift underfoot.
In 2016, when the issue of Sunday liquor sales was before the legislature (it failed that year and passed the following), Rep. Drew Christensen, R-Savage, who is among the state’s youngest legislators at 24, did some math and found that legislators who served three or fewer terms were much more likely to support Sunday sales (of course, there are exceptions: Rep. Jenifer Loon, R-Eden Prairie, who is 54 and was first elected to the House in 2008, authored Sunday sales bills).
Often, younger legislators and those who’ve served fewer terms are one in the same: According to the Legislative Reference Library data, the average member of the silent generation serving at the end of the 2016 legislature had been in their legislative body for 24 years. For baby boomers, 11 years; gen-xers, eight years and millenials, five years.
“I think too often in St. Paul, we get caught up in a that’s the way it’s always been kind of mentality, (that) I think younger legislators and legislators with less seniority are less likely to get caught up in,” Christensen said.
Researchers have found that members of different generations can have different philosophies and attitudes in the workplace. According to a report by the Research and Training Center on Community Living at the University of Minnesota, baby boomers tend to value hard work and sacrifice, are reluctant to go against peers, value chain of command and expect authority. Gen Xers question authority, strive for work-life balance, are adaptable to change and prefer flexibility. Millennials are often confident, able to adapt to change, value flexibility and balance and can be demanding.
Rep. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, in her early thirties and one of the first legislators to come forward to MinnPost about sexual harassment at the Capitol, describes feeling a sense of whiplash over the way women were treated when she arrived at the Legislature in 2017.
“I was in the workforce before I was elected … (but) when I went to the Legislature it was like oh, this stuff still happens. Stuff my mom would tell me about that happened when she was an executive with Wells Fargo. The stuff she would tell me about from the ’80s are things that happen at the Legislature.”
In light of the resignation of Sen. Dan Schoen and Rep. Tony Cornish following sexual harassment allegations that surfaced in the final months of 2017, the state is reviewing policies surrounding sexual harrassment.
When it comes to shifting culture, yes, but also for the sake of policy, Maye Quade says she hopes to see more fresh faces: she says it’s important for the concerns of younger Minnesotans to be heard.
“There are so many times we’ll be discussing a bill and I’ll have to look around and say, ‘what is your world?’” she said of her colleagues on the House floor. For example, when the Legislature was considering phasing out a program for first-time homebuyers, she recalled being taken aback by some members’ interest in getting rid of a program important to many in her generation.
“Most people in the Legislature own homes, some of them own multiple homes,” she said. “I heard a legislator reference their library and their solarium in their house and I was like ‘I live in a 600-square-foot apartment.’”
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Intergenerational equity
As a certified old person, I don’t mind if the legislature is older, on average, than the general population, but only up to a point.
Older, in this society, generally means “wealthier.” Not in the sense of having your own private island or half a dozen expensive automobiles, but of having more tangible goods and property than someone just starting out in life. Maye Quade’s last point is, I think, right on target.
Being one of them, I’ve no wish to see the elderly condemned to poverty, but a friend who was active in state government in Colorado once told me that, in the U.S., we spend $7 on every person over age 65 for every $1 we spend on a child under 12. Not being a professional researcher, I’ve not been able to check the accuracy of that statement, but it’s certainly plausible, given Medicare, Social Security, and numerous other programs designed primarily with the elderly in mind.
There are age-related discounts all over the place in the economy, but my son and daughter-in-law, both in their mid-40s, pay full freight just about everywhere. If we’re going to make noises about having government be more representative of ethnic and cultural realities, we should also make government more representative of age groups, as well.
Socialization
Many of the costs of old have been socialized, through some of the programs you mentioned and others. In that we have become a more just society. The costs of raising children? We’re not there yet. We do not even tolerate well children being in a restaurant, which I’m told by those wealthy enough to travel there (I’m not) is better handled in Europe.
A number of years back, a guy tried to sell my Dad on a bus sight-seeing tour in Chicago. Dad balked, and the guy mentioned the senior discount. Failing with the old man, he turned his sights on me. I said sure, I’ll get on the bus, if I get the senior discount.
No way, I was told. I objected. I was raising kids, had a mortgage, was saving for future college and retirement. None of those applied to Dad, but he could get a discount for buying two tickets while I got none for buying 4.
I choose instead to go to a museum, where I was informed my 12 year old was an adult and I would need to pay full freight for him.
Endpoints matter in this analysis
It wasn’t clear to me that when comparing average age of Minnesotan vs. Legislator that the age limits used for each population were the same. If all ages were included then I would expect the average age of Minnesotans would be less since children would be included. Also please consider using median rather than average since the ages of these respective populations are not normally distributed.