During an editorial meeting earlier this year, International Editor Sara Miller Llana and I started talking about a topic that seemed to be everywhere: affordability.
In the United States, voters regularly cite cost of living as their top concern, and political analysts say it will likely be a central topic in this year’s midterm elections.
But affordability isn’t just an American issue, Sara pointed out. People around the world, from Nigeria to the Netherlands, had been protesting cost-of-living stressors for months. And, at the time, massive protests around affordability in Iran were prompting a brutal government crackdown.
Why We Wrote This
Affordability isn’t just an American issue. In our magazine this week, we take a global approach to covering it.
At the Monitor, one of our goals is to bring a global lens to topics like this one.
That sort of perspective can help readers see in a more complete way the situations they face in their own homes, towns, and countries. And when stories shine light on that picture more broadly, it can open hearts to neighbors both near and far, illuminate something bigger than oneself, and, often, point toward solutions.
So, over the past few months, Sara, National Editor Mark Trumbull, and I have been working with Monitor reporters to come up with a group of stories that could bring this more expansive perspective to the issue of affordability.
Our first story is this week. We start in India, where Aakash Hassan and Lindsey McGinnis write about the squeezing of the middle class in a country where this demographic is expanding rapidly. The story they tell, I believe, will resonate for anyone sifting through bills at their kitchen table. As one expert they interviewed explains, the “middle class” is that demographic with enough money to have choices about what to do with it, even when those choices feel tough.
The fact that Lindsey and Aakash’s main characters live in New Delhi rather than in New York shows not only the expanse of this topic, but also the connections people share across ethnicity and nationality.
Over the next few weeks, we will share stories about housing, food, transportation, and energy – often cited as key affordability markers – from multiple continents and multiple perspectives. We hope you find these pieces illuminating, as well as connecting.
