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It's unfortunate that more senior professionals are having this experience, particularly as experience and expertise are so important for tackling big issues.

"Other services and brands are probably now better suited to cater to this need than EA." Do you have examples of these?

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Where Are the Older People in Our Movement?

by Ronen Bar

Mar 141 min read 10

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Building effective altruismCommunityDiversity and inclusionEffective altruism cultureOpinion

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Where Are the Older People in Our Movement?

Why is it important to have age diversity and more older participants?

Why is our movement, after being around for ~15 years (depending on how you count), less appealing to older participants?

How can Effective Altruism become more attractive to older demographics?

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A witty politician once said, "The world belongs to the old. The young ones just look better." He had a point. Power, seniority, and influence tend to come with age. Walking around the conference halls this February at EAG Global in the Bay Area, the average age seemed to be in the mid-20s or so. While youthfulness has its benefits, such as fewer family or career commitments, openness to pivoting occupation, and potentially more time for volunteering, I believe we miss out on the power, wisdom, and diversity that older participants could bring. Even people in their mid-late 40s appeared quite rare at the conference.

Why is it important to have age diversity and more older participants?

Power and Influence: Leaders and managers are typically older than their employees. The median age in the U.S. House of Representatives is around 58. Baby Boomers (now mostly in their 60s and 70s) hold about 50% of America's wealth. I assume similar trends apply globally.
Experience and Wisdom: Older individuals bring experience gained through years of trial and error.
Diversity of opinions, perspectives and priorities naturally evolve with age.

The Effective Altruism movement remains notably youthful. According to the EA Survey 2020, participants had a median age of 27 (mean 29).

Why is our movement, after being around for ~15 years (depending on how you count), less appealing to older participants?

How can Effective Altruism become more attractive to older demographics?

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David_Moss13d48

I agree this is a potential concern.

As it happens, since 2020, the community has continued to age. As of the end of last year, it's median 31, mean 22.4, and we can see that it has steadily aged across years.

It's clear that a key contributor to our age distribution is the age at which people first get involved with EA, which is median 24, mean 26.7, but the age at which people first get involved has also increased over time.

I think people sometimes point to our outreach focusing on things like university groups to explain this pattern. But I think this is likely over-stated, as this accounts for only a small minority of our recruiting, and most of the ways people first hear about EA seems to be more passive mechanisms, not tied to direct outreach, which would be accessible to people at older ages (we'll discuss this in more detail in the 2024 iteration of this post).

That said, different age ranges do appear to have different levels of awareness of EA, with highest awareness seeming to be at the 25-34 or 35-44 age ranges. (Though our sample size is large, the number of people who we count as aware of EA are very low, so you can see these estimates are quite uncertain. Our confidence in these estimates will increase as we run more surveys). This suggests that awareness of EA may be reaching different groups unevenly, which could partly contribute to lower engagement from older age groups. But this need not be the result of differences in our outreach. It could result from different levels of interest from the different groups.

Angelina Li12d16

Nice! By the way, I really appreciate how consistently your team helps ground discussions like this in data. I opened this post and as I was scrolling through, I thought, "oh I bet David has already responded with something helpful." It's a great public service!

Patrick Gruban 🔸12d33

As someone who heard from EA at age 40 and is now 50, this question comes up often in discussions with more experienced professionals. I wrote about my personal journey, which I couldn't have done without the luxury of much free time to learn and explore in this space. A recent post by Jim Chapman also describes the effort that can be needed to transition into the space.

In my local group, I'm mostly the oldest participant, as many other people my age don't feel very welcome in a group of younger people. They mostly also see donations as their pathway to contributing, which doesn't require the level of involvement in the community that people with career ambitions have. The group is simply less useful in an instrumental way; the same applies to EA conferences.

In organizations, the hiring process can sometimes be more focused on younger candidates. Some organizations prioritize a strong alignment of values, which involves cultivating hard-to-fake signals such as investing in networking, volunteering, attending conferences and retreats, and making a pledge that may present a significant challenge for individuals with family responsibilities.

The first time I applied for jobs was in my late 40s in EA organizations, as I was previously accustomed to networking and receiving invitations for work opportunities. Completing work trials under time pressure often seemed tailored to those with more fluid intelligence, which is typically higher in younger individuals, as opposed to the crystallized intelligence that develops later in life.

Sometimes, experienced professionals will vent how they were invited to a job and then had to start at the first stage, how they were treated unprofessionally in the hiring process, or even when they start how their expertise is not valued in an organization led by people with little prior leadership experience. This can lead to losing out on more experienced people. (At Successif, we help mid-career and more senior people navigate these challenges in the area of AI risk).

This leads me to the question if EA is the right place for more senior people. When I talk to people my age about impact, I'm more likely to recommend the donation opportunities at Effektiv Spenden, the 10% Pledge, or the book Moral Ambition for career inspiration than the global or national EA websites. While I often enjoy being the oldest person and spending much time in deep discussions with philosophically minded people 20 years my junior, I expect this to be the exception. People with families and busy jobs are probably looking for a quick way to shift their focus and connect to people. at a similar point in their life Other services and brands are probably now better suited to cater to this need than EA.

Lin BL10d1

It's unfortunate that more senior professionals are having this experience, particularly as experience and expertise are so important for tackling big issues.

"Other services and brands are probably now better suited to cater to this need than EA." Do you have examples of these?

OllieBase13d17

Walking around the conference halls this February at EAG Global in the Bay Area, the average age seemed to be in the mid-20s or so.

The average age of EAG Bay Area 2025 feedback survey respondents was 30, FYI.

I don't think this removes the thrust of your questions, which I think are good and important questions, but people do seem to consistently underestimate the average age of EA Global attendees.

OllieBase13d4

(30 is the mean, median is 29)

Julia_Wise🔸12d10

One project aimed at mid-career people: https://www.successif.org/our-work

david_reinstein12d5

I expect there are some cohort effects (people in more recent generations have a higher probability of being involved). In particular, many people get into EA via university groups (although it may not be the place they 'first heard' about it; see David Moss' reply), and these groups have only been around a decade or so.

But I also imagine some pure age effects (as people age they leave/are less likely to enter), perhaps driven by things like

1. Homophily/identity/herding: If you only see people unlike you (agewise) you're less likely to think you belong. This leads to inertia.

2. Cost and family priorities: EA ~expects/encourages people to donate a substantial share of their income, or do directly impactful work (which may be less remunerative or secure). For older people the donation share/lost income could seem more substantial, esp. if they are used to their lifecycle. Or probably more significantly, for parents it may be harder to do what seems like 'taking money away from their children.

3. Status and prestige issues: EA leaders tend to be young, EA doesn't value seniority or credentials as much (which is probably a good thing). But older people might feel ~disrespected by this. Or second order: they might think that their age-peers and colleagues will think less of them if they are following or 'taking direction' from ~'a bunch of kids'. E.g., as a jr. professor at an academic conference if you are seated at the grad students' table you might feel insecure.

4. Issues and expertise that are relevant tends to be 'new stuff' that older people won't have learned or won't be familiar with. AI Safety is the biggest one, but there are other examples like Bayesian approaches.

(Identity politics bit: I'm 48 years old, and some of this is based on my own impressions, but not all of it.)

Chris Leong12d4

I expect that some of the older EA's are more senior and therefore have more responsibilities competing against attending EA Global.

kevinj13d1

Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:

The movement is still young. People introduced in college are still only in their mid-30s.
Generational differences in moral partiality vs. impartiality. Moral impartiality is still not widely accepted.
Age discrimination
A good amount of funding is geared towards those coming out of post-grad.
Technological advances are typically adopted by the younger generations first (AI risk).
Being underprepared for retirement. Not everyone can (or wants to) be subject to a decrease in compensation, especially in years where retirement savings need to be accumulated.