Note AVERAGE Family Wealth vs. MEDIAN Household Income. Since AVERAGE is used where MEDIAN might have been, I assume this means the arithmetic mean, which is usually the default “meaning” ( haha ) of average, anyway.
The point is, the mean is likely to be much higher than the median because of the small contigent of extremely wealthy families. I’m supposing this will exaggerate the “race gap” in Family Wealth among the “middle classes”.
The "mean" is the "average" you're used to, where you add up all the numbers and then divide by the number of numbers. The "median" is the "middle" value in the list of numbers.
The point is, the mean is likely to be much higher than the median because of the small contigent of extremely wealthy families. I’m supposing this will exaggerate the “race gap” in Family Wealth among the “middle classes”.
Whether it is the average family wealth or the real median household income, there is still a real gap in wealth that has not changed very much over the past 50 years.
Actually, if there are just a few extremely wealthy families, the median household will go down regardless of race. The 1% are mostly white.