Why is any of that relevant? If we're discussing poverty rates, then we need to come up with a reasonably objective metric for poverty, not just throw together

Why is any of that relevant? If we're discussing poverty rates, then we need to come up with a reasonably objective metric for poverty, not just throw together some cherry-picked indicators. Economists have put a lot of thought into a few metrics, like inflation-adjusted median wage, which you simply ignore in favor of your own 'tv-size index'. For example, those larger houses may be on cheaper land (further from cities), or people may be spending more of their income on housing (at the cost of, say, food quality, or education). There are a million ways for an individual statistic to be misleading. This is the whole reason that we use aggregated statistics like real median wage.