Read the following passage and answer the item that follows. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

Average household income is the figure most often quoted when a district's progress is described, and on its own it can move in the right direction while most households in the district are no better off. A small number of large incomes lifts the average without touching the middle, so a district where the top has pulled away and everyone else has stood still reports the same improvement as one where every household gained a little. The two are not the same place to live in, and no reader can tell them apart from the average alone. What the median earns, and how the range has widened, are the figures that separate them.

Which one of the following statements most likely reflects as to what the author of the passage intends to say?