Cameroonian President Paul Biya; King Salman of Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Mahmud Abbas, the oldest international leaders
June 3 () –
The age of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, has been since his victory in the November 2020 elections a weapon with which his detractors have tried to discredit him and that is that he is the oldest person who has ever occupied the White House , although it has more than ten international examples to look at.
At 80 years old, Biden is still in the middle of his term and has already confirmed that he will run for re-election in the 2024 presidential elections, when he will already be 82 years old, and would end his term as president of the United States at 86. This would be a more than considerable age, although even so it would still be some distance from the current longest-lived world leaders.
To this day, the list of oldest international leaders is led by the Cameroonian president, Paul Biya, who is over 90 years old, 40 of them at the helm of the African nation. After him, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmud Abbas, is around 88 years old, while King Salman of Saudi Arabia exceeds the barrier of 87.
Behind these are other international leaders, such as King Harald V of Norway, aged 86; the emir of Kuwait, Nauaf al Ahmed al Sabá, also close to turning 86; Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who just turned 84; Queen Margarita of Denmark, 83 years old; or the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, of
82.
One of the main world figures with the most media coverage and international opposition to Biden himself is the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who at the age of 70 has been linked in one way or another since the end of the 20th century -either as president or as prime minister- – to the Russian government.
Putin’s age is also a weapon used by his detractors in the country, and outside of it. The Ukrainian Intelligence Service has come to affirm that the president is going through a complicated state of health and that the Kremlin has several voice actors on its payroll who impersonate him to attend different events.
Putin is followed by his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, who in March of this year was unanimously re-elected as the country’s head of state, thus guaranteeing himself a third term until 2028 in an unprecedented case in the ‘Asian giant’.
On the opposite side, the provisional head of state of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré (34 years old); the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric (37); Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin (37); or the interim president of Mali, Assimi Goita (39), rank as the youngest leaders in the world.
AVERAGE AGE OF LEADERS
According to a report by the Pew Research Center (PRC), the majority of international leaders — excluding those whose representation is symbolic — are in their 50s and 60s. In fact, 35 percent of the presidents are 60 years old and the average for all of them is 62 years old.
After these, 18 percent of international leaders are 40 years old, the same percentage as those who are already 70 years old. For their part, Biya, King Salman, Khamenei or Biden himself are among the five percent of leaders who are over 80 years of age.
According to the aforementioned report, countries considered “free” are more likely than “partly free” and “not free” that their president is close to the average age of the population, a situation that, however, it doesn’t exactly hold true for Biden.
At 80 years of age, the US president is more than twice the age of the country’s population average, which stands at 38 years.
“NON-FREE” COUNTRIES, OLDER LEADERS
The PRC report divides the main international leaders into a trio of “free”, “partly free” and “not free” countries. It is especially noteworthy that the average age of its presidents ranges from 58 to 69 years, going through 61, and the older average being the one that belongs to those countries where there are fewer freedoms.
In fact, the “not free” countries have Biya, the oldest president, and Traoré and Goita, two of the youngest international leaders. The United States, for its part, is one of the only countries classified as “free” and to have a leader over 80 years of age.
