One thing I know, what is a living wage is entirely subjective. I know people who couldn't live on $1000/week. And I know others who can live on a flat rock.
While this is true, there is a reasonable standard which is generally applied: the cost of basic housing, food, clothing, utilities, and other necessities.
To argue that people's ability, or lack thereof, to live frugally makes it impossible to know what a living wage would be, is just looking for excuses to do nothing.
It's often said here that if you don't earn enough money to feed your family, you should take a second job. People brag about working two or three jobs to make ends meet, but what kind of parent can you be to a child when you're always working and never at home?
The family values folk always say that women should stay home with their children and not work because raising the next generation is the most important job you'll ever do. Yet poor women are told to take a second and a third job to provide for their families. Who's raising their children?
When my daughter was small, we took her to art galleries, museums, the Science Centre, the ballet, plays - anything that would make for fun outing. There are all sorts if ways of doing this stuff on the cheap. Teachers called this "enrichment" and said she benefitted from it enormously. I called it spending quality time with my child. If I were working 15 hours a day, I wouldn't have had the time or the energy to enrich my child's life.