Average Is Never Universal

If you ask a person to describe someone, you are likely to hear them tell you that the person is just “average.” He’s average height, or he is average weight. He’s of “average intelligence.” He’s just the “average Joe.” Sometimes that person will describe themselves the same way. “Oh, I’m just average,” they will tell you. For the most part, we use that word to mean unremarkable or nondescript. It is a way to appear humble and not call attention to yourself, even if inside you really don’t feel that way. Or maybe we are just too lazy to get into the details of it.

So what exactly is average? I decided to do a little research. Here is what I found.

Globally, the average man is 5’ 6” tall, and the average woman is 5’ 2”. At 5’ 9”, I have always thought of myself as “of average height.” Not so. I am actually taller than average. As a kid, I had always dreamed of being able to dunk a basketball, but between my height and my less-than-spectacular vertical jump, I never came close. I was at least hoping to grow to be 6 feet tall, but I failed on that measure as well. I used to tell people I was 5’10” if I wore 2 pairs of socks, but now that seems silly. I am 5’ 9”, taller than the average male. My ego is thus restored. There will be no short man complex for me.

The average weight for adults varies widely, depending on which part of the globe you live in. The average weight for me depends on what month of the year it is, if you get my drift. My average weight during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays tends to be a bit higher than my average during the summer months. But that is another story.

The men of North America boast the highest average weight at 177.9 lbs. I was not able to find if a distinction is drawn between different times of the year, as I did with my own, but be that as it may. At 180 lbs, I am right around average, and in this instance, I like being average. The average weight for women in North America is 168 lbs. Given the abundance of food that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week in North America, it should be no surprise that men and women weigh more on average than people from other parts of the world.

Do you want fries with that?

In Oceana, the average weight for men is 163.4 lbs. In Europe, it is 156.1 lbs. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the average man weighs 149.7 lbs. In Africa, it is 133.8 lbs, and bringing up the rear are the men of Asia, whose average weight is 127.2 lbs. I am thankful for living in North America, where sporting my 180 lbs is average, as opposed to being morbidly obese in many other parts of the world.

The average Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, of a person is a score of 100. I found it interesting that they keep adjusting the difficulty of the test to keep the average at 100. They didn’t say if people are getting progressively less or more intelligent, though. About 68% of all people fall in the range of 85–115.

I have taken a number of “intelligence” tests over the years, including IQ tests. I would guesstimate my IQ is somewhere between 110 and 120. I’m not brilliant, believe me. As a matter of fact, if the IQ test was based on the ability to take a car’s engine apart and put it back together, my IQ would rival most potted plants. Very few people have an IQ below 70 or above 130.

Very few can take a car’s engine apart and put it back together either.

Only 45% of the world’s population is considered “educated.” For the sake of this essay, and because school systems vary widely around the globe, I am confining my statistics here only to the U.S. 85% of Americans graduate high school, but only 38% have a college degree. I have both, and a master’s degree to boot. I am apparently well above average in terms of education. That doesn’t mean I am any smarter than the next guy, but it does mean that I spent a lot of money and sat through a lot of lectures on a lot of topics. Some of them were even good.

Globally, the average person is 29.6 years old, while the average life expectancy is 78.9 years. In doing the math, it means that the average person today has about 49 years left to live. This surprised me somewhat, as the birth rate has steadily been declining in the past few decades while life expectancy has been steadily rising. At age 68, I am significantly above average in this respect. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

If you died before 78.9 years, you are below average. Of course, if you died before 78.9 years, you are probably not reading this either.

Is “LOL” an appropriate thing to write in an essay?

The average American household net worth is $1.06 million, but a more realistic middle-point median net worth is $192,700, according to data from the Federal Reserve. The reason that the median net worth is the better number to gauge your financial success is that the billionaire class skews the numbers wildly. It’s like putting one foot in a bucket of hot water and the other in ice water, and saying on average, the water is room temperature.

Half of all marriages end in divorce. The other half ends in death, or so the joke goes. Still, 54% of men and 60% of women will marry once, 13% of both men and women will marry twice, and 3% will marry three or more times. Over the age of 25, 23% of men have never married, while only 17% of women have stayed single. The average age for getting married has been steadily climbing as well. The average man gets married at age 29, while the average woman says her vows at age 27. So, if you are a 29-year-old man married to a 27-year-old woman and you have two kids, you are about average.

If you are average, you probably also belong to organized religion. 84% of the world’s population does. 29% are Christian of one flavor or another. 24% are Muslim. The other 31% is divided up among all the other organized religions of the world, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Druidism, and so on. 72% of Americans believe in Heaven, but only 58% believe in Hell. I’ll bet you anything that if you ask the 72% who believe in Heaven where they think they will end up, ten out of ten will say Heaven.

There you have it. Average. If, after reading this essay, you still think you are average, you are probably the only one.