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Notes -
Could this also have to do with life expectancy? I feel like the average/upper end of congressional age has increased since then... so presumably, someone retiring at 80 when they would have previously died at 75 would, for instance, be shown as part of this change, but not support the thesis at all.
I feel like it'd be a combination of life expectancies and particularly the ability to extend the final runway by a couple years if you're reasonably well-funded. You're probably not winning your last election if you're undergoing serious chemotherapy and clearly on death's door, and when modern medicine is pretty good at making that a 2-3 year step instead of a 3 month step that's going to impact a lot.
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it's a good point, the average age of members of congress also went up so the change in life expectancy won't totally explain the rise in retirements but it's a good point. I would have preferred Fong cites some kind of study that has more controls. but anyway, AI did point out 2 more possible explanations that Fong didn't mention:
Probably also helps turnover since it means that there's more of an active effort to target people in warm seats than historical norms.
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