JPN vs US cabinets

Nippon Goro Goro had an interesting post listing the bios of the newly reshuffled cabinet, as Koizumi won the general election once again this past weekend. After skimming the list, I was surprised by what seemed to be an unusually high average age. With all the talk of a typical Japanese long life-expectancy, coupled with how old-age brings an almost unhealthly level of respect and stature in this society, I hypothesized the average age of the new cabinet to be at least 5-10 years above that of the U.S. Turns out I’m wrong. However, the statistics on alma maters is rather glaring…
In short, on the Japanese side:

  • cabinet mean: 59, median: 61
  • 8 educational institutions represented, with University of Tokyo (6) and Keio University (6) being the most representedOn the US side:
  • cabinet mean: 59, median 57.5
  • 18 institutions represented, of which Yale, Princeton, and Michigan State were the most represented (2 each)(those interested in the actual Excel worksheet should email me at mromaine at va dot rosenet dot ne dot jp)

    Update 9/25: After a few discussions with others, it turns out the average age of the Japanese cabinet is actually surprising; past cabinet age-averages have been much higher. Maybe there really is hope for Japanese politics…

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    Posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2003 at 3:24 pm and filed under America, Japan, law, politics, tokyo life. Subscribe to RSS 2.0. Skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging disabled.

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