Recent polls suggest a significant number of Americans doubt President Biden, 81, could handle another presidential term due to his age. On the other hand, fewer respondents express similar concerns about former President Donald Trump, but he’s only a few years younger at 77.
Notably, both individuals have displayed moments of forgetfulness and physical instability, which some attribute to advanced age.
Enter two experts.
“As demographers, we can say it is likely that both Biden and Trump will be alive when the presidential term that begins in 2025 comes to an end in 2029,” Dudley L. Poston Jr., professor of sociology at Texas A&M University, and Rogelio Sáenz, professor of demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, wrote in a piece published by The Conversation.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump fall within the category of non-Hispanic white men, and their probabilities of survival, extracted from the 2021 life tables, are telling, they said. Mr. Biden has a 92.9% chance to see age 82, and Mr. Trump has a 95.1% chance to make it to 78.
The more significant consideration is whether they can complete a four-year term. Calculations indicate Mr. Biden has a 63.3% chance of surviving to at least age 86, while Mr. Trump has a 73.6% chance of reaching at least 82, the demographers say.
But historically, the two are just old.
“Biden and Trump are two of the three oldest people ever to serve as president. The population they are seeking to lead is also older than ever before,” the demographers write. “The median age of the nation’s population was 38.9 in 2022 compared with 28.1 in 1970 and just 16.7 in 1820.”
Still, things have changed since the Founding Fathers.
“Relative to the age of the population, President Biden is no older than the country’s first presidents,” wrote James Chappel, a scholar of aging and history at Duke University, in The New York Times.
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