Political Science Speaker Series talk with Postdoctoral Fellow Michael J. Wigginton.

The small number of young elected officials is the subject of increasing empirical study and public discussion. Does the high average age in our legislatures pose a problem for democracy? In this talk, I address the theoretical importance of legislators’ ages to providing effective representation, arguing that youth representation is fundamentally different from that of other underrepresented groups, such as women and racial minorities. Age is a transitory state that shares little with ‘sticky’ identities like gender or ethnicity, and younger citizens being less common in elected office should not in itself give rise to claims of underrepresentation and that legislatures will naturally skew towards middle-aged members. Instead, the issue of youth representation should be understood from a perspective of ‘critical mass’, with a small number of younger representatives being sufficient. Finally, I argue that research should disentangle the distinct issues of age representation and generational/cohort representation.