Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates This is a list of presidents of the United States by age. The first table charts the age of each United States president at the time of presidential inauguration (first inauguration if elected to multiple and consecutive terms), upon leaving office, and at the time of death. Where the president is still living, their lifespan is calculated up to Template:FULLDATE. The second table includes those presidents who had the distinction among their peers of being the oldest living president, and charts both when they became and ceased to be the oldest living.
Age of presidents
The median age at inauguration of incoming U.S. presidents is 55 years.[1][2] The specific years and days median is 55 years and 355 days, which falls midway between how old Grover Cleveland was in 1893 and Richard Nixon was in 1969.
The youngest person to assume the presidency was Theodore Roosevelt, who, at the age of 42, succeeded to the office after the assassination of William McKinley.[1] The youngest to become president by election was John F. Kennedy, who was inaugurated at age 43.[3] The oldest person to assume the presidency was Joe Biden, who took the presidential oath of office two months after turning 78.[1][4]
Assassinated at age 46, John F. Kennedy was the youngest president at the end of his tenure, and his lifespan was the shortest of any president.[3][5] At age 50, Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest person to become a former president.[6] The oldest president at the end of his tenure was Ronald Reagan at 77; this distinction will eventually devolve upon Joe Biden, who was older when he took office than Reagan was when he left office.[2][4]
The president born after the greatest number of his successors is John F. Kennedy. He was born after four of his successors: Lyndon B. Johnson (Template:Age in years, months and days); Ronald Reagan (Template:Age in years, months and days); Richard Nixon (Template:Age in years, months and days); and Gerald Ford (Template:Age in years, months and days). On the other extreme, Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden were each born before four of their predecessors. Reagan was born before Richard Nixon (Template:Age in years, months and days), Gerald Ford (Template:Age in years, months and days), John F. Kennedy (Template:Age in years, months and days), and Jimmy Carter (Template:Age in years, months and days). Biden was born before Donald Trump (Template:Age in years, months and days); George W. Bush (Template:Age in years, months and days); Bill Clinton (Template:Age in years, months and days); and Barack Obama (Template:Age in years, months and days).[7]
James K. Polk had the shortest retirement of any president, dying barely three months after leaving office at age 53 (the youngest president to die of natural causes).[8] Jimmy Carter's retirement, now 40 years, is the longest in American presidential history. At age 96, Jimmy Carter is also the oldest living president[2] as well as the nation's longest-lived president.[9] The youngest living president is Barack Obama, age Template:Age. Altogether, six U.S. presidents have lived into their 90s.[10] The first to do so, John Adams, was the longest-lived president for nearly two centuries, from 1803 until Ronald Reagan surpassed his lifespan, in October 2001.[11][12] The six Template:Linktext presidents, arranged by lifespan are:
-
Jimmy Carter
Born October 1, 1924
(age Template:Age in years and days) -
George H. W. Bush
June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018
(aged Template:Age in years and days) -
Gerald Ford
July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006
(aged Template:Age in years and days) -
Ronald Reagan
February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004
(aged Template:Age in years and days) -
John Adams
October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826
(aged Template:Age in years and days) -
Herbert Hoover
August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964
(aged Template:Age in years and days)
Presidential age-related data
Notes
Oldest living
Template:See also Of the 45 people who have served as president, 25 have become the oldest such individual of their time, with one, William Howard Taft, doing so twice. Herbert Hoover held the distinction for the longest period of any, from the death of Calvin Coolidge in January 1933 until his own death 31 years later. Lyndon B. Johnson held it for the shortest, from the death of Harry S. Truman in December 1972 until his own death only 27 days later. Theodore Roosevelt, at age 49, is the youngest individual to become the oldest living president; Jimmy Carter became the oldest to acquire the distinction at age 94. Nine of these individuals have also had the distinction of being the oldest living U.S. vice president: John Adams, Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush.
On three occasions the oldest living president lost the distinction not by his death, but by the inauguration of a president who was older: Theodore Roosevelt (born 1858) to William Howard Taft (born 1857) in 1909; Taft to Woodrow Wilson (born 1856) in 1913; and Richard Nixon (born 1913) to Ronald Reagan (born 1911) in 1981. Among them, Taft eventually regained the status, as he outlived Wilson.
Eleven presidents have held the distinction while in office. In the cases of George Washington, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Ronald Reagan, this occurred upon their inauguration as they were older than their living predecessors (or, in Washington's case, had no predecessors). In the cases of John Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon, this happened at the same time as their becoming the only living president; in the cases of Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Harrison, the only other living president at the time was a younger predecessor, John Quincy Adams and Grover Cleveland respectively. By contrast, the president who acquired the distinction furthest from his time in office was Jimmy Carter, who had been retired for Template:Ayd when he became the oldest living president, upon the death of George H. W. Bush.
Graphical representation
This is a graphical lifespan timeline of the presidents of the United States. They are listed in order of office, with Grover Cleveland listed in the order of his first presidency.
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</timeline>
The following chart shows presidents by their age (living presidents in green), with the years of their presidency in blue.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Template:Cite magazine
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Biden Is the Oldest President to Take the Oath. The New York Times(January 18, 2021). Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 John F. Kennedy. whitehousehistory.org. White House Historical Association. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Biden to Become Oldest President Ever at Inauguration(January 19, 2021). Retrieved January 21, 2021.
- ↑ What happens if Joe Biden dies in office?. Quartz(January 20, 2021). Retrieved January 31, 2021.
- ↑ Theodore Roosevelt remains a giant among presidents. The Hutchinson News(January 10, 2019). Retrieved February 8, 2021.
- ↑ Joe Biden is old. But how old compared to other leaders?. Tampa Bay Times(November 12, 2020). Retrieved February 14, 2021.
- ↑ James Polk. biography.com. A&E Television Networks(October 24, 2019). Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ Jimmy Carter, unable to make inauguration, saluted by President Biden in remarks(January 20, 2021). Retrieved January 31, 2021.
- ↑ Presidents and Vice Presidents Who Lived Into Their 90s in American History, Feinman, Ronald L.(November 6, 2015). Retrieved January 31, 2021.
- ↑ Reagan longest-living former president. Deseret News(October 12, 2001). Retrieved October 13, 2018.
- ↑ Ronald Reagan Post-Presidency Chronology. National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
Sources
- Frank Freidel and Hugh S. Sidey, "The Presidents of the United States". The White House.
- Robert S. Summers, "POTUS: Presidents of the United States". Internet Public Library.