The Average American (Part 2)

A couple weeks ago I wrote a sort-of book review about Kevin O'Keefe's The Average American.  Reading this book was prompted by my continuing interest in what the average American is and isn't and how people actually live.  While most people think they are fairly average (and by definition many will be), I wonder how many know what average is.  I'm quite sure that politicians - especially on the national league - are so out of touch as to have very little idea what average is, and isn't.  Again by definition, just getting into the club of Congress means that they are in such a small select group that a politician is no longer normal.
But, this isn't a post about anything political.  Taking a different tactic on what Mr. O'Keefe did, I was curious about statistics about what is actually average in the US.  Not what makes us so obliquely normal that only one person in the country can finally be average, but what are the norms.

Most of the information came from the Census Bureau's web site, which is a wealth of information, easily searchable and sensibly displayed.  Other sources were from online news articles and sadly, some from Wikipedia.  Most of the latter was backed up by verification (in overall scope) from other sources.

So what is an American?  I've broken this down in four groups identified as:  Fundamentals, Characteristics, Life, Financials.  What makes life interesting are the differences, sometimes big - others small.  These are merely soulless statistics about the bulk of people living in the United States.  As an aside (and only an aside), some of the most interesting people I have met have fallen pretty far out of these norms.

Fundamentals
Citizen of the United States - 93% of the population
Born in the United States - 87% of the population.

Characteristics
Height (male) 5'5" to 6'1" - 80% of the population (median is 5'10")
Height (female) 5'0" to 5'7" - 80% of the population (median is 5'4")
Weight (male) 146 to 252 lbs - 80% of the population (median is 195 lbs)
Weight (female) 118 to 225 lbs - 80% of the population (median is 165 lbs)

Life
Graduated from High School - 75% of the population
Can read English fluently - 85% of the population
Family is important - 87% of the population (stolen form Kevin O'Keefe and the most nebulous statistic)
Can legally drive a car - 68% of the population
Uses a telephone - 98% of the population (likely in a few years this will be changed specifically to a mobile)
Uses the internet - 85% of the population
Eats meat - 95% of the population (while vegetarians are in theory greater than 5%, the vast majority cheat on occasion)

Financials
Own a home - 68% of the population
Annual family income between $13k and $145k - 80% of the population
Net household worth between $5k and $660k - 80% of the population

I wanted to include "Have Children" in the mix, but while accurate rates of childbearing are available for women, the same cannot be said of men.  Data point to a consistent rate of 79% regardless of sex, but I didn't find this number compelling enough to include.

If all of these characteristics were randomly distributed in the population, that would mean about 6.7% of the 317 million Americans (from the Census Bureau's Population Clock as of this writing) would be average - or about 21.2 million.  In reality, there is going to be significant overlap which is beyond what I can find hidden in the statistics easily available.  For example, I suspect there will be overlap in the populations of people not born in the United States and those that can't fluently read English.  In other words, I have no idea how many people are average but that isn't the point.  As Mr. O'Keefe's book was a personal narrative about finding the Average American, perhaps this is a good excuse to continue to travel to discover how many of us are average - and how interesting the combination of average and bizarre can be.
Just as important, the list includes many things that would be common across the population of any developed country, suggesting that in most cases, these characteristics define what it means to live on the planet in a developed country?

Regardless of any of this, I'll continue to be fascinated by the norms of what it means to live in the United States and what it is to be different.

As the saying goes:
Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.