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  3. Almost 60% of five-year-olds in some of Britain’s poorest areas do not reach

Almost 60% of five-year-olds in some of Britain’s poorest areas do not reach

游客2023-11-09  16
问题     Almost 60% of five-year-olds in some of Britain’s poorest areas do not reach a "good level" of behaviour and understanding—double that found in wealthier suburban parts of England, a review into Britain’s widening social and health inequalities says.
    Inequalities in children’s development between local authorities are revealed by data published by Sir Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology(流行病学)and public health at University College London, who last year produced a landmark government review into how wealth affects health. The key determinants of health, he argues, relate to a host of issues including employment, the welfare state and child development.
    His new report shows that 44% of all five-year-olds in England are considered by their teachers to be falling behind in their development. However in commuter towns, such as Solihull and Richmond upon Thames, state schools report this figure to be about 30%. In Haringey, a deprived part of north London, it is almost double.
    Marmot, a public health specialist and author of Fair Society, Healthy Lives, said: "The evidence is very clear: investing in pre-school years pays most dividends. We already know that by the age of 10 a child from a poorer background will have lost any advantage of intelligence indicated at 22 months, whereas a child from an affluent family will have improved his or her cognitive scores purely because of his/her advantaged background."
    He pointed out that "education and child development are key for health. It is the educated who stop smoking... we know the key driver of teenage pregnancy is not getting early child development. You are not going to get pregnant as a teenager if you develop as a child."
    Only two dozen authorities of the 150 surveyed could claim to have more than half their five-year-olds passing the educational standard set by the government. Marmot said he was concerned that the government was just focusing on the "poorest" in society—the middle class of society needed help too. "I have tried to have this conversation with government without much success," he said, adding that "cuts to Sure Start and children’s centres won’t help".
    There was also an alarming health gap opening up within areas. Marmot pointed out that in Westminster the average life expectancy of male residents was 83, five years longer man the English norm, but this masked wide differences. The poorest in the London borough could expect to live 17 years less than the richest.
    Not only is life expectancy linked to social standing, so is the time spent in good health. The review reveals that Wirral, in north-west England, has the biggest difference in "disability-free life expectancy" between those at the top and those at the bottom of the economic ladder, with wealthy people likely to live 20 years longer without physical impairment.
    The data is meant to inform ministers as the government has proposed taking public health out of the National Health Service and put under the control of local authorities. [br] Marmot intends to stress ______ in his new study.
选项 A、social and health inequalities in children
B、children’s different behavior and understanding
C、the relation between wealth and health
D、the key determinants of children’s health
答案 A
解析 根据第1段末尾的widening social and health inequalities和第2段首句提到的Inequalities in children’sdevelopment可以知道他的新报告主要关注英国儿童在社会地位和健康问题上的“不平等”，故应选A。B在第1段提及，但此处提到的关于儿童不同的“行为和理解能力”只是研究时收集到的数据，并非他的新研究的论点，故排除；根据第2段可知C是Marmot去年一项研究的论题，并不属于他的“新研究”；D是Marmot的新研究中的细节，不是报告的焦点所在。
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