The terms average Joe, ordinary Joe, Joe Sixpack, Joe Lunchbucket, Joe Snuffy, Joe Blow, Joe Schmoe (for males) and ordinary Jane, average Jane, and plain Jane (for females) are used primarily in North America to refer to a completely average person, typically an average American. It can be used both to give the image of a hypothetical "completely average person" or to describe an existing person. Parallel terms in other languages for local equivalents exist worldwide.
Historically, there have been several attempts at answering who exactly is the average American. For example, the Saturday Evening Post and the Washington Post have attempted to just that. Both articles agreed that the average American is a white Christian female, who has a couple, and is politically independent.[1] [2] Admittedly, there are problems with this answer. In 2001, for example, no single household arrangement constituted more than 30% of total households. Married couples with no children were the most common constituting 28.7% of households. It would nonetheless be inaccurate to state that the average American lives in a childless couple arrangement as 71.3% do not.[3]
Today, statistics by the United States Department of Commerce provide information regarding the societal attributes of those who may be referred to as being "average". While some individual attributes are easily identified as being average, such as the median income, other characteristics, such as family arrangements, may not be identified as being average.
In terms of social class, the average American may be described as either being middle[4] or working class.[5] As social classes lack distinct boundaries the average American may have a status in the area where the lower middle and upper working class overlap.[6] Overall the average Americans, age 25 or older, made roughly $32,000 per year;[7] do not have a college degree; have been, are, or will be married as well as divorced at least once during their lifetime; live in their own home in a suburban setting, and hold a white-collar office job.[8][failed verification]
"Average Joes" are common fodder for characters in television or movies, comics, novels or radio dramas. On television, examples of "average Joes" include Doug Heffernan (King of Queens), Alan Harper (Two and a Half Men) and Homer Simpson (The Simpsons). In the film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, the protagonist, Peter, owns a gym for those who do not want an intensive workout, and the patrons of the gym are all somewhat overweight. The gym is named Average Joe's Gymnasium.[9]
In real life, as chronicled in his bestseller The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen, Kevin O'Keefe successfully completed a nationwide search for the person who was the most statistically average in the United States during a multi-year span starting in 2000. Newsweek proclaimed of the book, "The journey toward run-of-the-mill has never been so remarkable."