Well, it doesn’t particularly matter how far from the upper the median clusters are if their absolute standard of living has improved — and we measure that by accounting for inflation. Regardless of which inflation metric you use (some include housing prices, some don’t), median income has risen.
As for the lower cluster, the most reliable metric to use there is the poverty rate...which has also substantially fallen -> https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1308790816937095169?s=...
You can also look at the historic income trends divided up by quintile -> https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p... (Table H1, All Races, it's an Excel spreadsheet). Inflation adjusted income for the bottom two quintiles have also increased substantially.
> That would be consistent with a hypothesis that real wages have increased for higher earners and decreased for lower earners, right?
No, it would be consistent with a hypothesis that real wages have increased faster for higher earners than for lower earners, but demonstrates no evidence that it has decreased for lower earners.
The empirical results show that real wages increased across all income levels, and between 2014-2019, it actually increased faster for lower earners -> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/low-wage-workers-are-getting-bi...
Right, but that doesn't measure how for away from the median the upper and lower clusters are.
> Also, the median number of years to recoup the cost of a bachelors degree, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the 1980’s, from about 22 years to about 10 years
That would be consistent with a hypothesis that real wages have increased for higher earners and decreased for lower earners, right?