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Well said, and the easiest metric you could look at w/r/t cost-of-living is the average income : house price ratio. What was once withing reach for most educated workers is now often a fantasy for the rich. Unfortunately it is also what the lion's share of paychecks is often spent on.

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Real GDP per capita covers this. Inflation encompasses cost of living. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA Missing a breakdown by quartile, but it's the right metric

Does GDP per capita actually compare to median income? Sounds more like it uses mean income which is skewed by extremes (e.g. high earners).

This. An incredibly rich top 0.1% percent could skew GDP per capita a lot, but a happiness index not so much.

Simplifying things to the extreme, take 100 people where half of them earn $1 and are unhappy and half $2 and are happy. Give one person a $150 raise-- you just doubled the GDP but at best increased happiness by 1%.

It is no secret that a small percent of people have been getting very rich [1].

[1]: https://money.cnn.com/2011/02/16/news/economy/middle_class/i...

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