Chart of the Day: Age difference between leaders and led

 The Economist.com by way of Dan Hare.

Clear advantage here to democracies, although China's gap will shrink dramatically with the generational shift coming up (Hu to Xi).

It's a double-whammy:  Democracies get to choose and they choose leaders not too far off from the median, and autocracies are more likely in underdeveloped societies, which - by definition - tend to be youth-skewed (poverty tends to cause babies, just like income growth tends to act as birth control).

Comments

[Kellie Strøm]

On Iran they must've used Ahmedinejad's age - Supreme Leader Khamenei is 71.

[Vinit Joshi]

Is it 1848 yet?