2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: What drives the extreme age division between Sanders and Clinton voters? [View all]forest444
(5,902 posts)That has to do primarily with mortality, which of course increases after 60. But it also has to with the notable increase in births during the 1950s. That is, the number of people in their late 50s and early 60s would be a lot greater than the number of people in their 70s (born around 1940) even if not a single one had died (plus, there'd be a lot of grateful grandkids).
The two factors combined to create a situation in which the number of people, by 5-year age groups, begin a pronounced decline at the 60-64 age group. Up to the 55-59 group, you'll notice, the number of Americans in each age group is roughly the same (11 million in each gender).
This, by the way, is often pointed to as the principal reason for the alleged "funding crisis" Social Security is said to be entering. It's nonsense, of course, because the number of people in each of the younger 5-year age groups is also similar to the number of people in the 5-year group nearing retirement. Social Security would be in real trouble if our population pyramid looked like this:
That's a lot of older people nearing retirement, compared to the number of younger, working-age people. The solution? Lifting the cap on taxable income!
Hope this helped!