Joe Biden

EARLY LIFE

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., was born on November 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the only U.S. president born between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the end of World War II in 1945. He was the oldest of four children in a family that had fallen on hard times. His father cleaned furnaces and was a used car salesman; his mother was a homemaker. When Biden was in third grade, the family moved from Pennsylvania to Delaware, where Biden would live for most of the rest of his life.

Biden struggled to overcome a childhood stutter by reciting memorized speeches to his reflection and planning conversations in advance. He was more successful on the football field than in the classroom but went on to graduate from the University of Delaware and earn a law degree from Syracuse University in New York.

He soon turned to politics and at age 29 became one of the youngest U.S. senators ever elected. Just days before his swearing in, his wife, Neilia Hunter, and year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident. The couple’s two young sons, Beau and Hunter, were seriously injured. At first, Biden wasn’t sure if he should take his Senate seat, but he eventually did; he was sworn in from his son Beau’s hospital room in 1973. He went on to serve in the Senate for 36 years, until 2009.

FROM SENATOR TO VICE PRESIDENT

Biden gained both praise and criticism during his time in the Senate for his work in such areas as judicial appointments, criminal justice, and foreign affairs. During this time, he remarried and with his second wife, Jill Biden, added a daughter, Ashley, to their family.

Senator Biden made two unsuccessful attempts to become president—one in 1987 and one in 2007—before joining the ticket of Barack Obama as the vice-presidential nominee in 2008. Obama hoped Biden’s working-class roots would help him appeal to voters in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

On November 2, 2008, Obama defeated the Republican candidate for president, Arizona Senator John McCain. On January 20, 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, making Biden the country’s 46th vice president.

TWO-TERM VP

As vice president, Biden played an active role in the Obama administration, with Obama tasking Biden with several notable assignments. Biden's main role was as an advisor to Obama, mostly on issues of foreign policy and the economy. Obama consulted with Biden on many decisions, including who to put in his Cabinet and how to handle the two wars the United States was fighting in the Middle Eastern country of Iraq and in the Central Asian country of Afghanistan. Biden traveled to these countries several times.

Obama ran for reelection in 2012 against Utah Senator Mitt Romney, with Biden as his vice president once again. The pair won and went on to serve four more years together in the White House.

Some vice presidents run for president after the president they served under serves two terms and can’t run again. (According to the 22nd amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. president can only serve for two terms.) But Biden decided against it. In 2015, his eldest son, Beau, died from brain cancer; Biden noted that the family was still grieving, and he didn’t want to put them through a grueling election. Instead, he campaigned for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who ultimately lost the 2016 election to businessman Donald Trump.

A THIRD ATTEMPT AT THE PRESIDENCY

Dissatisfied with Trump’s performance as president, Biden decided to run against him in the 2020 election. He announced his candidacy in April 2019—but before he could face off against Trump, he had to beat his fellow Democratic candidates.

At first, Biden didn’t perform well in the race; several other Democratic contenders were considered stronger challengers to Trump’s presidency. But support surged for Biden after he won an important election in South Carolina in late February 2020, prompting other candidates to drop out of the race. By the end of April, Biden was the final remaining Democratic nominee for president.

A PANDEMIC PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

By this time, the coronavirus pandemic had started, affecting U.S. citizens and people around the world. Both Biden and Trump faced a unique challenge: how to campaign for president while a highly contagious, deadly disease spread across the country. Trump continued to speak at rallies with high in-person attendance, while Biden chose to enforce stricter social-distancing rules and held many of his campaign events online.

In addition to the pandemic, both candidates had to address racial tensions following several high-profile shootings of Black citizens by police officers. Healthcare was another heavily debated topic.

In August 2020, three months before the election, Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the first Black and Indian-American woman to appear on a major party’s national ticket.

2020 ELECTION RESULTS

To prevent coronavirus from spreading and help keep voters safe, election officials allowed more mail-in voting to take place during the 2020 election as an alternative to in-person voting. As a result, determining the election results took longer. But on November 7, most major news outlets announced that Biden had defeated Trump. Biden won approximately 81 million votes to Trump’s approximately 74 million, winning the popular vote by 51.4 percent. In the electoral college, Biden won 306 votes to Trump’s 232. (The candidate who reaches 270 electoral votes in the electoral college wins the White House.)

Biden was formally elected as the next president of the United States by members of the electoral college on December 14, 2020, making him the nation’s oldest president ever, at age 78.

STRIVING FOR DIVERSITY

Once in office, Biden worked to make his administration and the Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States, reflect the diversity of the American people. In addition to Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to become vice president, Biden also appointed the first openly gay Cabinet secretary, Pete Buttigieg. He later nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to hold a position on the Supreme Court.

PRESIDENTIAL VICTORIES

Biden’s term began with the Democratic Party controlling both chambers of Congress, which allowed the 117th Congress to pass more laws than nearly any other since the 1960s. One of Biden’s first priorities was passing the American Rescue Plan, which provided economic relief for individual Americans and businesses struggling to recover from the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden also signed several bills into law that focused on improving infrastructure, or the basic systems created in a country through technology and engineering to help it function. This included expanding internet access for rural communities, rebuilding bridges around the country, expanding childcare services, increasing clean energy production, and improving veterans’ health care. He also signed the first major gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years, as well as legislation aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2020 election controversies that lead to the insurrection on January 6, 2021. He also reaffirmed federal support for both same-sex and interracial marriage through the Respect for Marriage Act.

On the international front, Biden signed executive orders recommitting the United States to both the Paris Agreement to combat climate change and the World Health Organization in its fight against COVID-19. He also confirmed America’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a political and military alliance between countries in Europe and North America. Biden later helped grow and strengthen the alliance following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. His approval of billions of dollars in aid helped Ukraine defend itself during the conflict.

PRESIDENTIAL SETBACKS

Despite strong polling early in his presidency, Biden’s public approval lagged behind other recent presidents for most of his term. Record-breaking economic growth and low unemployment were countered by a high inflation rate, which means the cost of living for Americans soared as the price of everything from food to gasoline increased. Many Americans blamed federal spending as a driving force behind the rise in prices.

Biden received criticism in 2021 for the way he ended the decades-long war in Afghanistan. Despite public support for his commitment to end the war, many Americans felt that the evacuation was rushed, particularly after nearly 200 people, including 13 American service members, were killed in an attack in the final days of the exit. The public was further shocked by the almost instant collapse of the American-supported Afghan government. The U.S. didn’t leave any military force behind to protect the rights of at least some of the population. As a result, the Taliban, a religious extremist group, was free to deny women and girls access to education, sports, work outside the home, health care, protection from violence, and more.

Another action that contributed to Biden’s lack of popularity was his attempt to cancel student loan debt for millions of borrowers. Supporters of this action argued that debt forgiveness could help boost the economy and lessen the lifetime financial burden of people seeking higher education. Those who opposed the action felt borrowers had a responsibility to pay back loans they voluntarily took on, and that loan forgiveness was unfair to those who had already paid their debts. In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s program, though Biden continued to seek debt relief through other executive actions.

Furthermore, scandals involving Biden’s surviving son, Hunter, hurt the president’s reputation. After Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2023, they launched a series of investigations into Biden and his family. None of the investigations led to any evidence of corruption on the president’s part, but they did produce troubling information about some of Hunter’s business dealings.

A ONE-TERM PRESIDENT

Although Biden planned to run for reelection, by the summer of 2024, concerns about his age made him reconsider. After a poor debate performance against Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, Biden announced he wouldn’t seek reelection.

With the election only a few months away, Biden gave Vice President Harris his endorsement, meaning he publicly supported her to run for president. She quickly announced her candidacy and was embraced by Democratic lawmakers and delegates. In August, she announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her pick for vice president.

The last-minute change did not sway voters who remained dissatisfied with the Biden administration. Trump defeated Harris and succeeded in becoming the first person to win a nonconsecutive term since Grover Cleveland. He won about 77 million votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president, to Harris’s approximately 75 million, or 48.3 percent of the votes. In the electoral college, Trump won 312 votes to Harris’s 226. (The candidate who reaches 270 electoral votes in the electoral college wins the White House.)

LASTING LEGACY

Biden left office in January 2025. He announced he plans to spend more time in his home state of Delaware, where the Beau Biden Foundation, which works on behalf of vulnerable children in his late son's memory, is based. The organization has been an important passion of the president and First Lady Jill Biden. 

Biden made history by being the oldest person to ever become president of the United States—and by winning the 2020 election with the largest youth turnout since the Vietnam War. He’ll likely be remembered for his commitment to diversity, his late departure from the 2024 election, and his inability to prevent Donald Trump from securing a second term as president.

As a recent president, however, Biden’s legacy is still being determined. What future presidents do with his policies and how involved he remains in world politics will help shape how his presidency is perceived in the future.

From the Nat Geo Kids book Our Country's Presidents by Ann Bausum, revised for digital by Avery Hurt and Kay Boatner