Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 1, 1995                   TAG: 9501030078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-15   EDITION: HOLIDAY  
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

NEW HOUSE QUITE A BIT LIKE THE OLD HOUSE

The typical member of the new U.S. House of Representatives is a man in his early 50s. He was born in the state he now represents. He has a wife, three kids and most likely a law degree.

And for the first time in 40 years, he's typically a Republican.

The 435 men and women who take their seats in the House on Wednesday are overwhelmingly well-educated, upper-middle-class white professionals who have much more in common with one another than with their constituents, according to an Associated Press computer-assisted review of their biographies.

For instance, nine-tenths of House members have completed four years of college or more, compared with only one-fifth of all Americans old enough to have graduated from college.

The typical representative went to a big-name school, such as Harvard or Yale, or a prominent state university, such as Texas or Michigan. He got a bachelor's degree, often in political science, then went on to earn a law degree.

And most likely he's coming back to the House for a fifth term. If he's a newcomer to Congress, then his last job before winning the election was most likely in state or local government.

``The conventional wisdom coming out of this election is that we elected a bunch of citizen legislators,'' said Norm Ornstein, who studies Congress for the American Enterprise Institute. ``It turns out the stereotype was wrong.''

Similarities of background cut across party lines. A full 40 percent of House members have law degrees, though slightly more Democrats than Republicans.

``It's not the kind of thing we recommend people put in their 30-second spots,'' said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster.

Neither party's representatives can claim to be strangers to politics. Three-fourths worked in state or local government before being elected to the House.

One-fourth served in the military, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

Four out of five House members are married. Seven percent are divorced, and nearly 70 percent of the divorced are Democrats.

Altogether, members have more than 1,000 children, more than half born to Republicans. On average, each House family with children has three.

In the workplace, Republicans were more likely to have experience in business. Democrats were more likely to have worked in law enforcement or social services.

Democrats, on average, are slightly older than Republicans - 52 to 50. The median age of all Americans is 33.

There are 28 members old enough to have fought in World War II and just two members from Generation X, the youngest age group.

The oldest House member is Illinois Democrat Sidney Yates, who is 85. The youngest is Patrick Kennedy, a freshman Rhode Island Democrat, who is 27.

Ninety percent of the House is male. Nearly two-thirds of the House women are Democrats.

Two-thirds were born in the states that elected them. Seven, however, were born overseas: Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., in Cuba; Sam Gejdenson, D-Conn., in Germany; Tom Lantos, D-Calif., in Hungary; Elizabeth Furse, R-Ore., in Kenya; Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., in the Netherlands; and Jay Kim, R-Calif., in South Korea.

Democrats are slightly better educated than Republicans. Nearly three-fourths of the Democrats had some post-graduate work in college, compared with three-fifths of Republicans.

Only 2 percent ended their education with a high-school diploma.

Democrats' top colleges were the University of California, Harvard, Georgetown and Texas. Republicans were most partial to Harvard, Michigan, Georgetown and Yale.

But smaller institutions have some representation. Colorado Republican Joe Hefley is an alumnus of Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Okla., while California Democrat Sam Farr graduated from Willamette University in Salem, Ore.

Three served in the Desert Storm invasion of Iraq; six were Peace Corps volunteers; two, Florida Republican Porter Goss and Georgia Republican Robert Barr, were CIA agents; and one, Ohio Republican Michael Oxley, was an FBI agent.

The new House also includes former cab driver Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.; carpenter Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent; casino manager John Ensign, R-Nev.; gospel music promoter Bill Hefner, D-N.C.; and a riverboat captain - Don Young, R-Alaska