To think it’s unlikely £300k is the median household wealth in the UK

[Justacigarette]

saw this on Facebook: apparantly the telegraph are saying that median UK wealth is £300k per household.

From who I know personally, i find this so unlikely. Sure; some people do have wealth over this amount; no doubt about it. But I know many many more people who have a lot less

@Baital this is the message I was replying to

No - you are confusing average with median.

A few rich people and many poor = the rich people shift the average up. But they will have almost no impact on median.

You probably should have posted the whole message to be clear, rather than cropping as your original “I find this so unlikely” related to wealth. Libellious posted about their personal wealth of circa £4m, and also mentioned that they happened to know people who net £300k as salaries, which wasn’t unusual to them, they didn’t mention this in isolation.

Why pick out the median to get a feel for the nation's wealth. Wouldn't mode be more useful?

According to AI ( yes I know I know )
For individual wealth
the median is £125,000
the mean is £305,000
figures for 2020

OP I’ve spotted your figure for household wealth so yes this seems correct as of 2020

No, I don’t think so.

Modal class might be useful, ie put the household wealth into equally sized bands, eg 0 to < 25, 25 to < 50 and so on, and then pick the band with the most people in it.

It includes the family home so therefore probably correct

Let's not forget that, using the mean, the average person in the UK has one testicle.

That’s not how the median is calculated.

While noticing the joke, it’s 1 to the nearest whole number, but the mean isn’t usually given like that. There are more women and girls than men and boys, see here, and some males have 0 or 1 testicle.

The modal number of testicles is 0.

It doesn't have to be for the numbers to work, Even in the average public sector pension is £10k that a £250k plus a bit of property, a car, doesn't make £300,000 look unreasonable.

@Bumblebee72 but what does the above have to do with my post about public sector pensions? I never claimed 300k was unreasonable, I actually posted upthread saying I thought it would be higher.

My post was responding to the claim that anyone with a DB would have a "pot" much higher than 500k?

@latetothefisting Again, I am not sure what you think I am misunderstanding? I'm well aware of what some can accrue in a public sector pension. Or can you post some statistics that show what the average public sector pension is, maybe I am wrong & is it 25k plus? Although my original point referenced the under 50s.

"For women the average pension is now £7,502 a year, and for men it is £13,513. The overall average Civil Service pension in payment is £9,874 a year"

Many civil servants (not most or all but I think 30/40% are AA/AO or EO so earn under £30k) are in very low paying admin grades and obviously many only work in the civil service for part of their career so that seems reasonable.

As I'm stuck under a cat, I'm unable to check but our pension statements used to include a notional percentage of the lifetime allowance when it existed. Mine was slightly over 50% which made the value of my pension pot over £500k. That was due to about 30 years service, most of which I earned £30-40k so slightly above average but not a high earner.

If including equity and pension, I guess so. I rent at the moment, buying next year as relocating but I do have a good pension.