eli5 Why do we use median salary instead of mean salary?

Question

Wouldnt mean salary be a better representation of the public then median?

In: Other

Answer 1

It’s been said before but: medians are more resistant to outliers. If you are looking for what the *average* American person makes, you want the *median* of what *all* Americans make, because the *mean* of every American citizen pooled together will be dramatically higher than this middle value, due to the wealthy minority’s income being so high.

For example, 10% of households hold something like 65% of all wealth in the US. The lower 50% of the population make about 50,000 / year. So your median value would give you a similar value to that, while the mean would be significantly higher.