You know the statement "Women own 60% of US wealth" is just MRA idiocy, right?

[hfojvt]

65. not sure what you mean by categories

these categories?

110 million households
59 million married couples
19.3 million single men
31.7 million single women (dang it, those numbers SHOULD make dating easier for men)

or these?

By wealth it was (the first number being the percentage with zero or negative, the 2nd number being those with over $500,000 in net worth)
married - 11.9 vs. 12.4
men - 20.7 vs. 4.8
women - 24.0 vs. 3.6

Sure you can add those up, because they have the same denominator

11.9/100 + 5.7/100 + 3.5/100 = 21.1/100

And if you add up all the categories, you get approximately 100/100.

Of course, I did not include all 9 categories - just the extremes. The three at the top and the three at the bottom. Leaving out the three in the middle (although their approximate sum can be calculated).

The net worth of every household will fall SOME where on that spectrum, although they could have decided to divide things up further than they did. I mean, why lump all those over $500,000 together? Why not split that group into those above $5,000,000 and those below it.

Although 2011 also included medians, so that is one split. For example, the median net worth of those with over $500,000 in net worth was $836,033. Thus, I can divide the 13.5% with net worth over $500,000 into two groups - half with net worth above $836,033 and half with net worth below it.

Which tells me that
13.5% have net worth over $500,000
but only 6.75% have net worth over $836,033.

Medians allow me to divide between 18 classes instead of just 9.