Low-skill workers might make better use of their time/money to dedicate one parent to raising children full-time instead of what many dual-earner households do which is send their kids to pre-schools, summer camps, and daycares, and then hire a variety of household helpers.
Also, I think our society should still be structured to allow a single earner on minimum wage to support a family of four, without going on welfare of sorts. It's really complicated though, and for every argument supporting one side of this argument you can always find a really good rebuttal.
Our society is structured that way, except for the "without going on welfare" stipulation. A sole breadwinner with a spouse and two children making $20k will receive another $10k in EBT and EITC, free healthcare, and pay a tax rate close to 10%. Effectively his or her income will be above $30k, which isn't bad considering per capita GDP is only about $45k.
How could society be structured to guarantee higher wages to unskilled workers?
>The median household income in the United States was $44,389 as of 2004.[9][dead link] The median income divides households in the US evenly in the middle with half of all household earning more than the median income and half of all households earning less than the median household income. According to the US Census Bureau, the median is "considerably lower than the average, and provides a more accurate representation."[49]
As it happens, the _median_ household income is about the same as the _mean_ GDP per capita in the US right now. That's because incomes typically have distributions in which the mean is a lot higher than the median, as your link notes. Note that GDP per capita is also higher than mean per-capita income for people because there are non-household components of GDP (e.g. you would need to count unrealized capital gains as income to get closer to "income" approximating GDP).
I agree that household income is a more interesting thing to compare to for this case, though, but even more interesting would be comparing to similar households. Otherwise you're comparing the income of our hypothetical family of 4 to the incomes of 1-person households, incomes of households containing just a student, incomes of households containing one or two retirees, and so forth.
Also, I think our society should still be structured to allow a single earner on minimum wage to support a family of four, without going on welfare of sorts. It's really complicated though, and for every argument supporting one side of this argument you can always find a really good rebuttal.