Economy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Officials from China, India, Saudi Arabia and Group of Seven nations will participate in a first virtual meeting of a new sovereign debt roundtable on Friday, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday, confirming an earlier Reuters report.The roundtable will also include officials from countries that have requested debt treatments under the Group of 20 common framework – Ethiopia, Zambia and Ghana – as well as middle-income countries such as Sri Lanka, Suriname and Ecuador, which have faced their own debt crises, three sources had earlier said.The meeting will be co-chaired by the IMF, the World Bank and India, the current leader of the Group of 20, and comes a week before G20 finance officials are due to gather in Bengaluru, India, from Feb. 23-25. An in-person meeting of the roundtable expected on Feb. 25 and a formal launch is planned at the IMF-World Bank spring meetings in April.Brazil, which will lead the G20 next year, is also taking part, one of the sources said. An IMF spokesperson confirmed the first roundtable meeting would take place on Friday, and said more details would be released in the near future. “The objective is to bring together key stakeholders involved in sovereign debt restructuring, from traditional creditors from advanced economies, to new creditors like China, Saudi Arabia, India, as well as the private sector and debt countries to address the current shortcomings,” they said.The roundtable will include the Paris Club of official creditors and private sector participants – the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the International Capital Markets Association and two private-sector financial institutions that have asked not to be identified, one of the sources said.Creation of the body comes amid growing frustration about the slow pace of discussions on debt relief for Zambia, which first requested help two years ago. Organizers say the roundtable could help resolve issues in principle and will not focus on Zambia or other individual cases.Officials hope to resolve China’s concerns about cutoff dates to protect new financing from debt restructuring by the end of the year, one of the sources said.G7, International Monetary Fund and World Bank officials have long pushed for faster and broader efforts to deliver debt relief to heavily indebted nations to avoid cuts in social services that they fear could tip off social unrest.U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other G7 officials see China, now the world’s largest sovereign creditor, as the main stumbling block for quicker work on debt treatments. They are also pushing for agreement by G20 members on expanding the common framework to include middle-income countries.Eric LeCompte, executive director of the Jubilee USA Network, a coalition of religious, development and advocacy groups, said support for the matter was growing among other countries. But China’s opposition – and that of Russia – remained significant a “stumbling block,” he said.“The majority of countries support expanding these policies to middle-income countries, but China is the biggest challenge,” LeCompte said, adding that Europe had gone through a similar period of reluctance on debt relief in the 1990s, but eventually came around. Also on the agenda will be China’s repeated calls for World Bank and other multilateral development banks to participate in debt reductions – a proposal firmly rejected by U.S. officials, who argue that those lenders already offer highly concessional loans and grants to countries in crisis. More

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s overwhelmed asylum agency is strengthening efforts to weed out high numbers of applicants who “abuse” the system while passing through Mexico to reach the United States, Mexico’s top asylum official said on Monday.Mexico has the world’s third highest number of asylum applications after the United States and Germany, reflecting growing numbers of refugee seekers that have strained resources at the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR).Once migrants request asylum, they are exempt from deportation and are eligible to seek work, motivating many to file applications even without the intent to stay in Mexico, said Andres Ramirez, COMAR’s director.”It’s an abuse of the asylum system,” he told reporters at COMAR’s busy Mexico City office. “Treating COMAR like a kind of travel agency.”The agency recently began a pilot in the southern city of Tapachula near the Guatemala border, where it has its biggest load of applicants, geared at quickly rejecting cases that do not merit asylum, Ramirez added. He noted some applicants falsely believe COMAR distributes permits allowing travel within Mexico. In reality, asylum seekers typically must stay in the state where they began their cases.”This has put us in a situation of near-breakdown,” Ramirez told a news conference. COMAR received close to 119,000 applications last year, slightly fewer than the year before.This January, the number more than doubled from the same month in 2022. The claims included 430 from Afghans – a soaring increase from past years. Yet Ramirez noted many Afghans are unlikely to see out their cases in Mexico, where so many aspects of daily life from religion to food are so different than home.”Many Afghans do not necessary want to stay in Mexico,” he said. “In the United States, there’s a much bigger Afghan community than what we have here.” More

U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan granted a Justice Department motion to stay the lawsuits filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.Prosecutors said it made sense to delay those lawsuits because the cases substantially overlapped, and the outcome of the criminal case would likely affect what issues remained in the civil cases.They also cited the risk that Bankman-Fried could gather evidence in the civil cases to improperly impeach government witnesses, circumvent discovery rules in criminal cases, and tailor his criminal defense.Bankman-Fried consented to putting the civil cases on hold.Stays of SEC and CFTC lawsuits are common when the Justice Department files parallel criminal cases.Bankman-Fried, 30, has been free on $250 million bond and living in Palo Alto, California, with his parents since pleading not guilty to looting billions of dollars from FTX. Another Manhattan federal judge, Lewis Kaplan, oversees that case. More

All market eyes Tuesday will be on the release of the Labor Department’s consumer price index, a widely followed inflation gauge.
Economists are expecting that the CPI will show a 0.4% increase in January, which would translate into 6.2% annual growth. However, there’s some indication the number could be even higher.
The Federal Reserve is determined to keep fighting inflation, so the report could harden their position.

Prices are displayed in a grocery store on February 01, 2023 in New York City.
Leonardo Munoz | Corbis News | Getty Images

Just as Federal Reserve officials have grown optimistic that inflation is cooling, news could come countering that narrative.
All market eyes Tuesday will be on the release of the Labor Department’s consumer price index, a widely followed inflation gauge that measures the costs for dozens of goods and services spanning the economy.

The CPI was trending lower as 2022 came to close. But it looks like 2023 will show that inflation was strong — perhaps even stronger than Wall Street expectations.
“We’ve gotten surprises on the soft side for the last three months. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if we get surprise on the hot side in January,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
Economists are expecting that CPI will show a 0.4% increase in January, which would translate into 6.2% annual growth, according to Dow Jones. Excluding food and energy, so-called core CPI is projected to rise 0.3% and 5.5%, respectively.
However, there’s some indication the number could be even higher.
The Cleveland Fed’s “Nowcast” tracker of CPI components is pointing toward inflation growth of 0.65% on a monthly basis and 6.5% year over year. On the core, the outlook is for 0.46% and 5.6%.

The Fed model is based on what its authors say are fewer variables than the CPI report while utilizing more real-time data rather than the backward-looking numbers often found in government reports. Over time, the Cleveland Fed says its methodology outperforms other high-profile forecasters.

Impact on interest rates

If the reading is hotter than expected, there are potential important investing implications.
Fed policymakers are watching the CPI and a host of other data points for clues on whether a series of eight interest rate increases is having the desired effect of cooling inflation that hit a 41-year high last summer. If it turns out that monetary tightening isn’t working, it could force the Fed into a more aggressive posture.
Zandi said, however, that it’s dangerous to make too much of individual reports.
“We shouldn’t get fixated too much on any month-to-month movements,” he said. “Generally, looking through month-to-month volatility we should see continued decline in year-over-year growth.”
Indeed, the CPI peaked out around 9% in June 2022 on an annual basis but has been on the decline since, falling to 6.4% in December.
But food prices have been stubborn, still up more than 10% from a year ago in December. Gasoline prices also have reversed course, with prices at the pump up about 30 cents a gallon in January, according to AAA.
Even the initially reported 0.1% decline in the headline CPI for December has been revised up, and is now showing a gain of 0.1%, according to revisions released Friday.

“When you’ve had a string of lower-than-expected numbers, can that continue? I don’t know,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group.
Boockvar said he doesn’t expect the January report to have a lot of influence on the Fed one way or the other.
“Let’s just say the headline number is 6%. Is that really going to move the needle for the Fed?” he said. “The Fed seems intent on raising another 50 basis points, and there’s clearly going to be a lot more evidence needed for them to change that. One number is certainly not going to do that.”
Markets currently expect the Fed to raise its benchmark interest rate two more times from its current target range of 4.5%-4.75%. That would translate to another half a percentage point, or 50 basis points. Market pricing also indicates that Fed will stop at a “terminal rate” of 5.18%.

Changes in the CPI report

There are other issues that could cast a cloud over the report, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics is changing the way it’s compiling the report.
One significant alteration is that it is now weighting prices on a one-year comparison rather than the two-year duration it had previously used.
That has resulted in a change in how much influence the various components will have — the weighting for both food and energy prices, for instance, will have an incrementally smaller influence on the headline CPI number, while housing will have a slightly heavier weighting.
In addition, shelter will have a heavier influence, going from about a 33% weight to 34.4%. The BLS also will give heavier price weighting to unattached rental properties, as opposed to apartments.
The change in weightings are done to reflect consumer spending patterns so the CPI provides a more accurate cost-of-living picture.

Correction: Economists polled by Dow Jones predict the core CPI will rise by 5.5% on an annual basis. An earlier version misstated the figure.

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Good morning. The White House has said there is no evidence yet that three objects shot down over North America in recent days were conducting surveillance, but added it could not rule out the possibility of espionage. John Kirby, National Security Council spokesperson, said President Joe Biden had ordered the shooting down of the unidentified objects — over Alaska, Canada’s Yukon territory, and Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes in the US Midwest — due to the risk to civilian aircraft and because he could not rule out that they were spying over North America. “Their altitudes were considerably lower than the Chinese high-altitude balloon and did pose a threat to civilian commercial air traffic,” Kirby said, explaining the decision to strike the objects with air-to-air missiles. “And while we have no specific reason to suspect that they were conducting surveillance of any kind, we couldn’t rule that out.” Revelations of frequent flights over Taiwan provide new insight into China’s extensive military balloon programme, which has drawn global attention after the US shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon earlier this month off the coast of South Carolina.China, meanwhile, has accused the US of repeatedly flying surveillance balloons into its airspace. Washington immediately denied the allegations.Opinion: Recent global events, including the worsening of US-China relations, can be viewed through a psychological lens, argues Rana Foroohar. She offers guidance on how both sides can tiptoe away from a disastrous outcome.Five more stories in the news1. Philippines accuses China of using military-grade laser The Philippines has accused China of targeting one of its coast guard vessels with a military-grade laser in the South China Sea. The Chinese ship directed the laser at the BRP Malapascua twice on February 6, “causing temporary blindness to [the] crew at the bridge”, the Philippine Coast Guard said.

The Philippines said the Chinese coast guard ship, right, aimed the laser at the BRP Malapascua, ‘causing temporary blindness’ to the Philippine crew © Philippine Coast Guard/AFP/Getty Images

2. FIS to spin off Worldpay payments business US-based financial technology group FIS said it will spin off Worldpay, the payments business it acquired for $43bn just four years ago, after it failed to successfully integrate the two companies. The 2019 acquisition created one of the largest providers of financial infrastructure that underlie the bank payments sector.3. Israelis stage protest over planned judicial overhaul Tens of thousands of Israelis rallied outside parliament yesterday to protest against the hardline new government’s controversial plan to curb the powers of the judiciary. The demonstration outside the Knesset came as lawmakers from Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government voted to put the first batch of reforms to parliament.4. Ford to license electric vehicle battery tech from China’s CATL Ford plans to license the technology to use in a $3.5bn factory it plans to build in Michigan as it accelerates a push into electric vehicles. The carmaker’s deal with the world’s biggest battery producer comes as new US tax credits for EVs take effect under the Inflation Reduction Act climate law that passed last year.5. Amazon chief plans to ‘go big’ on physical stores Andy Jassy has vowed to back the company’s struggling grocery store business, despite recently announcing that its growth plans were on hold. Jassy told the Financial Times that the ecommerce giant was ready to “go big” on bricks-and-mortar stores, blaming a lack of “normalcy” during the pandemic for a series of stumbles. Big Read: Since Jassy took over from Jeff Bezos in 2021, Amazon has lost $1tn in market value. Does he have a vision for the ecommerce group?

The day aheadBank of Japan nomination Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida is expected to nominate Kazuo Ueda as the next central bank governor. Ueda is a supporter of the country’s ultra-loose monetary policy, Japan growth figures Preliminary gross domestic product figures for the fourth quarter of 2022 are set to be released today. Revised figures will be published next month.US inflation data A crucial set of US inflation figures will be released today. Although inflation has been trending lower, economists have forecast that in January the decline will have moderated.Earnings Results are expected from Airbnb, Avis Budget, Carrefour, Coca-Cola Company, Kirin Holdings, Marriott International and Toshiba.What else we’re reading Global MBA Ranking 2023: change at the top The 25th anniversary edition of the FT’s annual MBA rankings brings a new number one school and updated methodology. Andrew Jack, the FT’s global education editor, explains why after a quarter of a century it was time to take a new approach to the ranking. MBA 101: Interested in going to business school? The FT has launched a new six-part newsletter course that will take you through every stage of applying for an MBA. Register today. China shows suppressing strikes only fuels discontent Making striking more difficult does not remove the underlying conditions that drive workers to strike. Instead, it pushes discontent underground. And without negotiation conflict is hard to avoid, writes Yuan Yang. Mariana Mazzucato on the ‘McKinseys and the Deloittes’ of the world What do the “Big Three” — McKinsey, Bain and Boston Consulting Group — really know? Supposedly brought in for short projects, consultants never seem to leave. Economist Mariana Mazzucato argues that consultants are hobbling the state’s ability to perform the role of economic motor.Is there such a thing as too much pay? As the UK entered a cost of living crisis, private equity headhunter Sita Kolossa had a surreal conversation with a client about his salary. “He told me £1mn was not enough,” she said, sounding aghast, noting that this figure excluded his bonus. “I mean, what do I even do with that?”.Quake tests ties between Syrian refugees and Turkish hosts The earthquake struck at a time of worsening public hostility towards Syrians in Turkey, exacerbated by a cost of living crisis. It also comes ahead of a general election set for May that experts say will further politicise their plight. The refugees now fear they will lose out in the allocation of resources as Ankara faces the massive task of reconstruction.

Take a break from the newsWhat is the name of the fantasy world that is the setting for Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings? Have a go at 15-across in our latest crossword puzzle. More

During almost three decades of on-and-off deflation, the Bank of Japan governor’s mission was straightforward: do your best to support the economy and move inflation up towards its target. Now it has suddenly become complicated, leaving Kazuo Ueda — the outsider who is prime minister Fumio Kishida’s surprise choice to run the BoJ — with a formidable task on his hands. It will take a deft policymaker, a visionary economist and a savvy communicator to steer the BoJ to a safe harbour.The challenge for Ueda is that after a decade of ultra-low interest rates, during which the BoJ’s balance sheet ballooned, core inflation is now at a 41-year high. The tricky task of normalising monetary policy is in sight. After the BoJ shocked markets by loosening its yield curve control policy in December, with 10-year bond yields now allowed to vary by 50 basis points around zero, investors are piling on pressure to abandon the policy altogether.At the end of a process during which many candidates were considered and either refused or discarded, Ueda is a sound choice. He is a former member of the BoJ policy board and a distinguished monetary economist. That makes him a historic selection, breaking a pattern in which the job rotated between officials from the BoJ and the finance ministry. Given the exceptional complexity of Japan’s economic position, with the BoJ’s huge balance sheet and public debt standing at around 260 per cent of annual output, there is much to be said for having at the helm an expert with no institutional baggage.Kishida is due some credit for selecting a governor with strong credentials rather than making a more political choice. The prime minister is expected to nominate as deputy governors Shinichi Uchida, a BoJ insider with many years of monetary policy experience, and Ryozo Himino, a well-regarded former commissioner of Japan’s Financial Services Agency. It is, on paper, a solid team.Markets do not know what to make of Ueda. Initially, they took his likely nomination hawkishly: the yen strengthened and 10-year yields jumped. But there is little certainty about how Ueda will behave. As a policy board member during the BoJ’s early experiments with quantitative easing a generation ago, he was regarded as a dove. More recently, he has talked about the negative side effects of yield curve control. Perhaps the one thing that can be said is that, as an academic macroeconomist, he is likely to be more sympathetic to the concept of unconventional monetary policy than many other candidates.As an outsider, Ueda will be well placed to conduct a thorough review of BoJ policy during the last couple of decades. That will help to decide a path forward. Reaching the bank’s 2 per cent inflation target is still a sensible anchor for monetary policy, and even though core inflation is now running at 4 per cent, the BoJ expects it to drop below target in the years to March 2024 and 2025. Ueda will need to come up with an exit strategy from ultra-loose monetary policy, but it is far from clear that he needs to implement it straight away. After years of struggling to escape deflation, it would be perverse to abandon that goal when victory is in sight.The bigger picture is that Ueda cannot do this alone. His appointment is an opportune moment to debate Japan’s overall economic strategy for the coming decade, including the balance between monetary and fiscal policy, and how to boost growth. In the short term, though, a plan to depart from an extreme policy stance will be his focus. Speaking in July, Ueda said: “There is a need for the BoJ to prepare an exit strategy.” Japan is now hoping he knows how to do it. More

Today’s top storiesChina accused the US of flying high-altitude balloons into its airspace more than 10 times last year, and of conducting hundreds of reconnaissance missions, as the aerial surveillance dispute between the two nations intensified.Ukraine urged its European allies to avoid “negative messaging” about its prospects of joining the EU as diplomats warned of unrealistic expectations about the speed of the country’s accession process. Nato warned that it was in an “ammunitions race” in the country against Russia. Wirecard’s former chief executive Markus Braun denied any knowledge of fraud at the German payments company that collapsed in 2020 in one of Europe’s largest accounting scandals, telling judges that he was rejecting “all charges” against him.For up-to-the-minute news updates, visit our live blogGood evening.Could Europe’s gas crisis be over? The European Commission seems to think so, judging by its economic forecasts this morning that suggest falling gas prices and a mild winter, as well as supportive government policies and a revival in household spending, mean the EU will dodge recession.The upgrade says EU growth this year will be 0.8 per cent rather than the 0.3 per cent forecast in November, while the euro area will expand by 0.9 per cent rather than the 0.3 per cent suggested at the end of last year. Brussels also said that inflation had peaked, forecasting EU consumer price growth would hit 6.4 per cent this year, falling from last year’s 9.2 per cent, while in the euro area it would drop from 8.4 per cent to 5.6 per cent.The feeling that the worst of the power crisis has passed is echoed by top trader Pierre Andurand, who tells the FT that Vladimir Putin has “lost the energy war”. The cut in gas exports to Europe may have driven prices temporarily higher but Putin has underestimated buyers’ ability to adapt, Andurand argues. The miscalculation means “Russia has lost its biggest customer forever.”The next big task for EU ministers, who meet today in Brussels, is the reform of the bloc’s electricity market, which they hope will be less stressful than last year’s tortuous negotiations over the gas price cap.The FT’s Alice Hancock has seen draft plans, led by Denmark and signed by other northern European countries including Germany and the Netherlands. Eight “key principals” of the proposals include incentivising investment in clean energy, ensuring consumers benefit and making the EU more resilient to “external shocks”. They hope to reach agreement before Spain, which has alternative proposals, assumes the rotating EU presidency in July. “A fight is inevitable but let’s just hope there will be unity and a clean fight without bitten-off ears,” one diplomat said.The moves follow stinging criticism two weeks ago from the European Court of Auditors which said consumers could have saved billions of euros if the bloc’s energy watchdog had properly regulated electricity providers.Meanwhile, the optimism engendered by improved gas storage levels in the EU is yet to spread to the UK. Infrastructure expert Sir John Armitt tells the FT that the government is taking a “big gamble” on energy prices continuing to fall after failure to reach an agreement on storage capacity. Talks with Centrica, which owns Rough, the UK’s biggest storage facility, have collapsed over a disagreement on state subsidies.Need to know: UK and Europe economyUK employers expect private-sector pay to rise by 5 per cent in the first quarter, highlighting ongoing labour shortages. By contrast, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said expectations of just 2 per cent pay rises in the public sector helped provide some context for the current wave of strikes.It’s enough to drive you to drink — if you can find a pub that’s still open, that is. New analysis showed closures in 2022 were near their highest level in a decade, with the prospect of “much starker” damage to come after the government’s £18bn energy support package for business “tapers away” from the end of March. Prosecutors in Turkey have issued arrest warrants for scores of developers as president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tries to address mounting criticism over lax enforcement of building standards that led to such a high death toll in last week’s earthquake. Need to know: Global economyFollowing data showing a still-hot US jobs market, investors are now betting on a longer period of higher interest rates with a peak slightly above 5 per cent in July, with only one cut by year-end. The view was given credence today by Fed official Michelle Bowman. Ukraine’s minister of finance Serhiy Marchenko writes in the FT that Russia needs to be cut out of the global financial system, and in particular from the Financial Action Task Force. The FATF, created by the G7, sets standards to limit money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.New Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has worried some investors by criticising the president of the country’s central bank and questioning its independence. Lula has hit out at its 3.25 per cent inflation target, saying it is too low and that interest rates are being cut too slowly. Israeli president Isaac Herzog urged the country’s new hardline government to delay a judicial overhaul, warning the country was “on the brink of constitutional and social collapse”.Contributing editor Ruchir Sharma tells the story of the world’s most resilient currency: Thailand’s baht.Need to know: businessMassive January spending has confirmed for many the unfair advantage enjoyed by England’s Premier League over the rest of European football. Our Big Read highlights how it has become the de facto Super League.

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With inflation at about 17 per cent — almost double the eurozone average — retailers and food producers in Poland are resorting to “shrinkflation” or skimping on the quantity or quality of products while keeping prices the same.Saudi Arabia is making another attempt at launching its own car industry, but this time with electric vehicles, as it tries to diversify away from oil production. It aims to pour billions into a manufacturing hub to produce 500,000 cars a year by 2030. Shares in small artificial intelligence groups are soaring following the hype around ChatGPT and other generative AI models, leading analysts to warn of a “speculative” bubble.The World of WorkIs there such a thing as too much pay? Management editor Anjli Raval examines an issue facing many chief executives: how do you manage the pay and expectations of the highest earners?Talking of which, six-figure bonuses for those joining major US and UK law firms came back down to earth last year as a new era of job cuts replaced the “frenzied market” of 2021. Senior business writer Andrew Hill delves into the world of “psychological safety” and the art of encouraging teams to be open. The 25th anniversary edition of our Global MBA Ranking features a new number one school and updated methodology with an increased focus on sustainability and diversity. And don’t forget to sign up for MBA 101, the new email series from our business education team that guides you through the step-by-step process of applying for an MBA. Register here ahead of the first instalment on February 14.Some good newsChester Zoo is celebrating the first successful birth of a baby “dancing lemur” in Europe. The Coquerel’s sifaka is only found on the island of Madagascar where it faces a fight for survival due to widespread deforestation.I bet that you look good on the dance floor © Chester Zoo More

The writer is executive director of American CompassEconomists will spend hours poring over US inflation data released on Tuesday. But their calculations mostly obscure the experience of American families trying to make ends meet. In 1985, an American man working the typical full-time job could support a family of four on 40 weeks of income, and be able to afford a range of nutritious foods, a three-bedroom house, a comprehensive health insurance plan, a family car, even saving to put both kids through the state university. In 2022, paying for all that would require 62 weeks of his income, which is a problem, there being only 52 weeks in a year. These figures come from the Cost-of-Thriving Index (Coti), which compares the rate at which wages are rising to the rate of cost increases for middle-class staples. They show starkly the effect on household budgets of a decades-long stretch in which housing prices, health insurance premiums, college tuition, and more skyrocketed much faster than wages. Traditional measures of inflation miss this fact. When inflation-adjusted figures report that a 2022 earner could afford roughly what a 1985 earner could, that assumes the 2022 earner still wants to drive a 1985 car, live in a 1985 house, watch a 1985 television, and receive 1985 medical care — and that we would call that “middle class”. Think about healthcare, where economists (rightly) celebrate extraordinary but costly breakthroughs in medical technology while families (also rightly) notice that insurance premiums keep eating a larger share of their salary. Measuring inflation is important. But measuring the cost of living in the middle class is important too. The Coti calculates the cost of a clearly defined set of items that a middle-class family should be able to afford: a typical basket of nutritious food as established by the US Department of Agriculture; monthly rent for a just-below-average three-bedroom house in a moderately priced housing market; a family health insurance plan of the type provided by an employer; driving a car 15,000 miles; and saving enough to fully fund enrolment in a public college for two children. In 2022, all this would cost roughly $76,000. Divide this cost by the median weekly wage for a man employed full-time, which in 2022 stood at $1,219, and you get the 62 weeks needed to cover the costs, up from 40 weeks in 1985. Younger men in prime child-rearing years have lower weekly wages and thus a higher Coti — it reached 73 last year. Women’s median wages tend to be lower than men’s, producing Cotis that are higher still. This approach also puts regional inequities into stark relief. California has the second highest Coti, at 73, but first prize goes to West Virginia, at 79. What these otherwise very different states have in common is an unsustainable economic trajectory — whether that is high wages unable to keep pace with higher costs, or wages so low that even low costs become unaffordable. The better-off states are the ones that have stayed closer to the middle of the road, generally in the upper Midwest: Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Minnesota and the Dakotas, for example. Focusing on the cost of thriving helps us to answer some fundamental questions. Why do so many families have two parents working full-time, although they say they would prefer to have a parent at home with young children? Why isn’t everyone “moving to opportunity” in big coastal cities? It confirms what everyone knows though the data disguises — that raising a family on one income used to be much easier, and that for all the celebration of growth and technological progress, something important has been lost. More