To be fair, making $20k was almost always a choice in those cases.
And in fact it isn’t specifically a choice. Sure you can make choices that, over a long term, will boost your income but it’s rarely a choice.
I guess if you're willing to sacrifice some things it could work. You're definitely not raising a family of 3-4 in a nicer neighborhood with that amount.
We're all pretty bad at knowing what will make us happy in advance.
With kids, the cheaper areas have generally worse schools, parks, etc.
Having an income of 20k/year in US puts you at like 16th percentile.
That is assuming your status is above subsistence level in your society.
I don't think there is one correct answer to the question of how much money you have to have to live, because it's mostly about your biggest expense, imo. Everything else you can economize on to an extreme if you have to, if you're healthy and sane and frugal.
Once you start talking about a "nice" neighborhood, you're talking about a competitive zero-sum game where the costs can increase without limit.
The neighborhood they were living in was generally fairly average, everything considered. But only one of them had one kid (also single parent though).
Not in a large city. But I’m fairly sure in that case the main downgrade would be the neighborhood.
A lot of people are happy in college and they're almost all living on less than $24k a year despite working over 40h a week (although schoolwork is a lot more engaging than industry IMHO).
I can say I was very happy with minimal income in my university years, but would not be anymore as my friends are out of the campus and getting forward with their lives.
This is what causes people in the West who earn $35k and $350k alike to feel 'poor' despite the fact that even the former income is already in the global 99th percentile.
On average people making $80k are happier than those making $20k, to a greater degree than when comparing $10M to $1M.