[mejutoco]

> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person

GDP is an average, not a median, so it might align with the average person, not the median. The average/mean can hide many things (see Anscombe s quartet) which is one of the problems with GDP IMO.

[rayiner]

It depends what you’re using the data for. If you’re comparing across countries, or looking at a developing country over time, it’s a relatively small factor. The ratio between the average and the median isn’t that big even in the U.S. (about 1.3). Meanwhile, Poland’s GDP per capita has tripled since 2005: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location....

[mejutoco]

> The ratio between the average and the median isn’t that big even in the U.S. (about 1.3)

Being off by 30% might not matter for some usages, but it is not a small amount. It seems the median is more accurate to report and we agree.

[dhosek]

I don’t know that there is any way to calculate a median value of GDP/capita. You can look at income distributions and find a median income and compare that to a mean income, which could allow an estimation, but beyond that, GDP is an intrinsically composite number which cannot be easily (at all?) broken down to individual contributions. I assume income is what the parent commenter is basing the median-mean comparison on, but it’s kind of out of nowhere with no explanation.

[rayiner]

For purposes of comparing countries to each other and the same country over time, it’s not 30% off. The average skews higher than the median everywhere, so it’ll be 1.3/1.x.

If you have reported median incomes that are calculated the same way across countries and over time, that would be better. But many countries don’t reliably track that data, and the ones that do calculate it in completely different ways.

[mejutoco]

That all sounds reasonable. My concern was with your quote

> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person

GDP per capita is an average. This means it does not align with the _median_ person, but with the average. I believe this is factual and undeniable. No doubt it is interesting too to try to find other metrics for different usages as well.

> For purposes of comparing countries to each other and the same country over time, it’s not 30% off

You said the ratio for the same country between gdp mediand and average is 1.30. That means it is 30% off. Again, we can keep moving the goalposts and I could agree, but for the quoted statements i believe the above is true.

[rayiner]

> GDP per capita is an average. This means it does not align with the _median_ person, but with the average. I believe this is factual and undeniable.

That’s why I used the word “align” instead of the word “is.” If the ratio of mean to median is 1.3, if the mean doubles, the median also will double—the movement of the two values will be “aligned” even if one is offset from the other.

That means when you’re talking about the economic growth of a country, Poland in this case, the mean is a reasonable proxy for the median unless there has been a massive change in the ratio of the median to the mean.

[mejutoco]

From Cambridge dictionary:

> align: to be the same or similar, or to agree with each other; to make two things do this

But I get it, you are using it as correlation.

Still, if gdp per capita average is 130 and median is 100 (ratio is 1.3) there is a 30% difference. This is exactly why, even if they correlate they are not very similar aka they "do not agree with each other" as per the definition above. With your definition they "align".good enough for me. It aligns even better (more closely) to the median.

[hollerith]

Replacing the average with the median is not some brilliant move that clarifies any question about an economy. For example, reducing the income of the bottom 49.9% of society to zero would not affect the median income at all.