2. 职称英语
  3. Historians may well look back on the 1980s in the United States as a time o

Historians may well look back on the 1980s in the United States as a time o

游客2024-11-01  9
问题      Historians may well look back on the 1980s in the United States as a time of rising affluence side by side with rising poverty. The growth in affluence is attributable to an increase in professional and technical jobs, along with more two career couples whose combined incomes provide a "comfortable living". Yet simultaneously, the nation’s poverty rate rose between 1973 and 1983 from 11.1 percent of the population to 15.2, or by well over a third. Although the poverty rate declined somewhat after 1983, it was still held at 13.5 percent in 1987, comprising a population of 32.5 million Americans.
     The definition of poverty is a matter of debate. In 1795, a group of English magistrates decided that a minimum in-come should be "the cost of a gallon loaf of bread, multiplied by three, plus an allowance for each dependent". Today the Census Bureau defines the threshold of poverty in the United States as the minimum amount of money that families need to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet, assuming they use one third of their income for food. Using this definition, roughly half the American population was poor in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s. By 1950, the proportion of the poor had fallen to 30 percent and by 1964, to 20 percent. With the adoption of the Johnson administration’s antipoverty pro-grams, the poverty rate dropped to 12 percent in 1969. But since then, it has stopped falling. Liberals contend that the poverty line is too low because it fails to take into account changes in the standard of living. Conservatives say that it is too high because the poor receive other forms of public assistance, including food stamps, public housing subsidies, and health care. [br] It can be inferred that poverty _________.
选项 A、is defined very concretely in every period
B、is difficult to define in specific terms
C、is defined in material terms
D、is defined according to the standard of each decade
答案 A
解析 文章第二段第一句指出，贫困线的确定是有争议的。但从第二段中提到的两个历史阶段所确定的贫困线来看，它们都有特别具体的规定，如1795年对贫困线的规定是：最低收入等于1加仑面包的价钱乘以3再加上养活受赡养者的开支。今天美国人口普查局将最低收入规定为：假设1/3用于购买食品，一个家庭的最低收入必须足以为家庭成员购得营养充足的食物。C不对。由以上的分析可见，最低收入不仅以实物(material)的形式确定，还以价格等形式确定。
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