You have a good point, and I appreciate the evenhanded approach. I'm still far from sold that "poverty wage" is a useful term if we want to have a healthy discussion. It leaves too much nuance out.
So wages should be linked to the number of people in the household? Workers with more kids should earn more by law?
We do this is Europe, we pay something called 'kid allowance'. In some places people make 10 kids for the allowance, ignore them or mistreat them and live on that money.
Name one state where someone making minimum wage can afford an apartment, food, healthcare, and utilities, and some form of transportation. I think it's fair to say that if you can't, that counts as poverty.
88 percent of people making the federal minimum wage are older than 20. A third are older than 40. Median age is 31. More than half work full time.