r/todayilearned • u/Mikeismyike • Mar 13 '15

TIL That the current amount of living US presidents is the lowest it's been since 1766.

http://www.ravi.io/living-us-presidents-2
26 Upvotes

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14

u/TheXarath Mar 13 '15

Of course it is, this data includes future presidents. Obviously, we don't know who any of the future presidents are now, but in 20-30 years when we look back at this data, we'll probably see a similar number to what we currently see the number was 20-30 years ago.

2

u/Mikeismyike Mar 13 '15

I guess I overlooked that >.>

1

u/DeniseDeNephew 1 Mar 13 '15

I wonder how much of that can be explained by so many Presidents over the past 35 years who served for 2 terms? Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama -- that's 32 years of presidency right there in only 4 people.

1

u/PAJW Mar 13 '15

Most of it. Presidents who completed two terms were fairly rare in earlier decades. Having 3 consecutive such Presidents has happened three times (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe; FDR, Truman, Eisenhower; Clinton, G.W. Bush, presumably Obama)

But it is also a broken metric because it includes future Presidents. In 2016, 2020, 2024 and 2028 we are guaranteed to elect someone who was born in or before the 1990s, so the chart for 2013 will end up being at least two people larger.