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The terms average Joe, ordinary Joe, Joe Sixpack, Joe Lunchbucket (for males) and ordinary, average, or 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. 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 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. Other "average" characteristics are easier to identify. In terms of social class, the average American may be described as either being middle〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Christian Science Monitor on What is Middle Class )〕 or working class. 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. Overall the average American, age 25 or older, made roughly $32,000 per year,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=US Census Bureau, Personal income for all sexes, races in 2005 )〕 does not have a college degree, has been, is, or will be married as well as divorced at least once during his or her lifetime, lives in his or her own home in a suburban setting, and holds a white-collar office job. "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 don't want an intensive workout, and the patrons of the gym are all somewhat overweight. The gym is named Average Joe's Gymnasium.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) )〕 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." ==Families== As the United States is a highly diverse nation, it should not be surprising that there is no single prevalent household arrangement. While the "nuclear family" consisting of a married couple with their own children is often seen as the average American family, such households constitute less than a quarter of all households.〔〔 Married couples without children are currently the plurality constituting 28.7% of households, compared to 24.1% for nuclear families. Another 25.5% of households consisted of single persons residing alone. Recent trends have shown the numbers of nuclear families as well as childless married couples decrease. In 1970, 40.3% of US households consisted of nuclear families with childless couples making up 30.3% of households and 10.6% of households being arranged in "Other family types."〔 By 2000 the percentage of nuclear families had decreased by 40%, while the number of other family types had increased by 51%. The percentage of single households has also steadily increased. In 1970, only 17% of households consisted of singles. In 2000 that figure had increased by 50% with singles constituting 25.5% of households. The most drastic increase was among the percentage of households made up of single males, which nearly doubled from 5.6% in 1970 to 10.7% in 2000.〔 Today, one can no longer refer to the nuclear family as the average American household, neither can one identify the current plurality of married couples without children as "the average." Recent statistics indeed indicate that there is no average American family arrangement, but that American society is home to a wide and diverse variety of family arrangements. The one thing the data does indicate is that the average Joe most likely does not reside in a nuclear 4-person family.〔〔
A statement that can be made, however, is that most Americans will marry at least once in their lifetime with the first marriage most commonly ending in divorce. Today a little over half (52.3%) of US household include a married couple, showing a significant decrease since 1970 when 70.6% of households included a married couple.〔 Current trends indicate that people in the US are marrying later and less often with higher divorce rates. Despite the declining prevalence of marriage, more than three-quarters of Americans will marry at least once in their lifetime. The average age for marriage for a male was 26.8 and 25.1 for a female. Americans are also likely to remarry after their first divorce. In 1990, 40% of all marriages were remarriages. All together one can conclude that while there is no prevalent average household arrangement, most Americans (the average Joe) will get married and divorced once with a considerable number of Americans remarrying at least once. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Average Joe」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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