Introducing the Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) Dataset

Abstract

Research increasingly highlights the social group composition of decision-making bodies in politics. Beyond issues of gender and ethnicity, an emerging literature focuses on age groups. The absence of young adults in elected legislative assemblies is a democratic deficit with potentially severe repercussions. Yet, research is rarely able to address the issue of age group representation systematically, because we are lacking empirical information on the age distribution in parliaments. The Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) dataset remedies this dearth of data. It provides information about the numerical presence of age groups in parliaments, spanning across the globe and over time. It includes age data on legislators, such as the share of young or older Members of Parliament (MPs). The dataset also reports measures that compare the presence of a certain age group of legislators in relation to the same age group in the general population of a given country. Moreover, it includes gendered figures, such as the presence of young female MPs. The WARP dataset contains data for more than 700 elections in 149 countries and is freely available. It allows for a novel type of analyzes, that makes use of the age composition of legislatures.