[bhupy]

Median is immune to outliers, so it's generally what you want to look at even in spite of inequality.

That being said, you can even look at the per-quintile levels -> https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

See table H-1, All Races (it's an Excel spreadsheet). Across all quintiles, including the bottom 2, inflation-adjusted income has increased.

> When you factor in student loan debt

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 -> https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-va...