When my cursor is placed at the start of an empty line and I press the backspace key while in insert mode, I'd expect it to wrap the the previous line. However it stays in the same line and does nothing.
I can't seem to figure out what I should add to my .vimrc file to fix this.

You can set backspace option:
:set backspace=indent,eol,start
Or
:set bs=2
If you manually install Vim, no matter where you are on Debian, or
Ubuntu, or even other platform, please add the below code to your
~/.vimrc(The below code works on my Debian manually installed Vim):
set backspace=indent,eol,start
After set nocompatible " be iMproved, required under ~/.vimrc.
Notice: set backspace=2 Do Not Work on my Debian manually installed Vim.
My Debian Manually installed Vim version is: 8.2.
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