Introducing the Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) data set

Abstract

The absence of young adults in elected legislative assemblies is a democratic deficit with potentially severe repercussions. Yet, research is rarely able to address the issue of age group representation systematically because we are lacking empirical information on the age distribution in parliaments. The Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) data set remedies this dearth of data. It provides information about the numerical presence of age groups in parliaments, spanning across the globe and over time and includes age data on legislators, such as the share of members of parliament (MPs) aged 30 years or under, 35 years or under, or 40 years or under. The data set also reports measures that compare the presence of legislators aged 30 years or under, aged 35 years or under, aged 40 years or under, aged 41 to 60 years, as well as aged 61 years or over in relation to the same age group in the general population of a given country. Moreover, it includes gendered figures, such as the presence of young female MPs. The WARP data set contains data for more than 700 elections in 149 countries, so far, and is freely available online. It allows for a novel analysis of the age composition of legislatures. KEYWORDS data set, parliaments, youth representationAbout 25 years ago, Norris (1997) described the composition of parliaments around the world as follows: Legislators tend to be men, members of the country's ethnic majority group, wealthy, and middle-aged or older. Over the past years, some aspects of this picture have changed. While still miles away from being representative of the socioeconomic or demographic traits of the population, many parliaments across the globe have become more diverse, not the least having a larger share of women present in national decisionmaking bodies (Arendt 2018;Sobolewska et al. 2018;Tripp and Kang 2008). Yet, the same shift has not happened with age representation. The presence of young adults-those aged 35 years or below-has not increased over the past decades and continues to hover around 10 percent of legislators globally. The share This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Apprentices or outsiders? Age-driven heterogeneities in access to political capital and reelection

“…These norms often favor traits, resources, and competences that young individuals have yet to acquire (Belschner, 2023; Bjarnegård, 2013; Cirone et al, 2021). 1 Nevertheless, some young individuals do succeed in navigating the recruitment process and secure election, a success that is in part attributable to the growing demands for youth representation (Krook and Nugent, 2018; Stockemer and Sundström, 2022). Our knowledge of what happens to these young MPs once they enter office is limited (Winsvold et al, 2017).…”