Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday.

I recently fell down the rabbit hole trying to learn what I could establish about the median resident of the United States. Like, what does life look like for America's most average person? Did a wild thumbnail just appear? That's unusual.

Ok, so the median age in the United States is 38.1 years old, meaning that this person was born in 1986. There are more women than men in the United States so our median person is female. She is White and her name is Jessica because that was the most popular name in 1986 when this person was born. Jessica lives in a household with 2.51 people and she is married; Just slightly more American adults are currently married than currently divorced, widowed, or never married. And her household income last year was $74,580. About 15% of that went to taxes. Another 15% went to healthcare costs. Much more—around a third—went to housing costs. And Jessica's financial life is pretty challenging. She understands her household to be living paycheck to paycheck and she has about $4,700 in savings. She also has a retirement account, but it has less than $10,000 in it.

Jessica lives within a major metropolitan area like Dallas, Fort Worth say, or Sacramento, but she lives in a suburban neighborhood. She has a 27-minute commute each day to and from work. She does not work from home. And she grew up in the same area where she currently lives and lives within an hour's drive of some or most of her family. Jessica most likely works in one of the two largest employment sectors in the United States—public education and healthcare—and she gets her health insurance through work. Now the Europeans are saying, "I don't understand why she spends 15% of her income on healthcare if she has health insurance," and we in America are laughing while crying. Jessica has taken some college courses, in fact, she may have an associates degree, but she does not have a bachelor's degree. She identifies as a Christian and while she doesn't go to church every week, she does go a few times a year and she believes in an afterlife. She's a registered independent and votes in, uh, some elections, but not all of them. She identifies as straight and believes in marriage equality for LGBTQ people. She is pro-choice and in favor of the death penalty, although she also believes it is currently unjustly used.

Jessica believes gun ownership should be more restricted than it is and she has a very low opinion of politicians in general, but Congress especially. Jessica has consumed some alcoholic drinks in the last year, but not in the last month. She reads books, between one and five per year, and spends about 2 hours and 25 minutes each day on social media. She spends more than 30 minutes per day outside, but less than 1 hour, meaning that she spends more time in Instagram than she spends outside.

Jessica works 36.4 hours a week and spends 101 minutes each day in her car, which incidentally is most likely a pickup truck. She hasn't been on an airplane in the last year, but she has flown before. When asked how she's doing overall, Jessica reports being very happy with her family and work life but less so with her health and household income. If Jessica had to choose between being not very happy, pretty happy, and very happy, she would choose pretty happy. Jessica is about 5'4" tall, weighs about 155 pounds, and at least as of late 2023, had a positive opinion of Taylor Swift. She has 1.46 pets, most likely 1.46 dogs, but cats aren't far behind. She eats out at least once a week and she drinks coffee every day, in fact, she might drink more coffee than she drinks tap water. Jessica sleeps around 6 hours 48 minutes per night and wants to exercise the federally-recommended 150 minutes per week, but doesn't. And lastly, although it is widely understood to be abnormal, Jessica does in fact sneeze. Americans report sneezing a median of four times per day.

So Hank, I think it's really interesting to imagine Jessica, but in doing so, we need to remember that few if any people are actually that much like Jessica, right. Because the United States is an extraordinarily diverse nation. We also have relatively high economic inequality compared to other countries so people are both more likely to be much wealthier than Jessica and more likely to be much poorer than she is. And also we are a racially diverse nation where race is a huge factor in socioeconomic class and mobility. All that noted, I do think understanding the median can help us to understand the places where we are failing and also the places where we've made progress.

20 years ago, for instance, Jessica did not believe in equal rights for LGBTQ people. On the other hand, not much progress has been made when it comes to Jessica's overall experience of personal or financial security, which indicates places where we need to reform our systems to better include more people.

Anyway, I was surprised by a lot of this. I'm very much like Jessica in that I drink too much coffee, but I'm very different from Jessica in other ways. And I'm curious of how you think of yourself in the context of Jessica, so let's continue the conversation in comments.

Hank, thank you for being awesome. I will see you on Friday.