I would suggest that the median is taken, in this case, because it provides the biggest and sexiest headline number. The average (and by extension the total) w

I would suggest that the median is taken, in this case, because it provides the biggest and sexiest headline number. The average (and by extension the total) wealth has gone down by a much smaller percentage since 2007. The fluctuations just happened to have hit the people around the middle particularly hard. The people at the bottom haven't seen their net wealth decline at all, because they never had any. The people at the top have seen their net wealth decline substantially, but since it was largely in other asset classes less so [percentage-wise] than the people right in the middle, whose net wealth was dominated by home equity. Bottom line: recessions suck. They happen every decade or so. Plan with this in mind.