I'm not pitching any metric. I'm describing the metric being discussed. The average is certainly not worthless. The average gives the expectation, which is mor

I'm not pitching any metric. I'm describing the metric being discussed. The average is certainly not worthless. The average gives the expectation, which is more meaningful than the median, which is just the arbitrary line at the 50th percentile. So if we're trying to find the expected value of how rich someone is, the average income is the answer. And if we want the expected value of how poor someone is, this new metric (average poorness) is the answer. If we want to learn about poverty, obviously the poorness is more important. But of course, you could also calculate the median poorness in this case, but that would actually just be the inverse of the median income, so no new information would be gained.