2. 职称英语
  3. It has become fashionable to issue dire projections of declining prosperity b

It has become fashionable to issue dire projections of declining prosperity b

游客2025-01-30  9
问题    It has become fashionable to issue dire projections of declining prosperity based on demographic aging. But is that really such a problem?
   There is no doubt that all countries of the world are getting older, but they are at very different stages of the process. The median age in the United States — with half the population older and half younger — is currently 36. In Ethiopia, it’s 18, owing to a higher birthrate and a lower life expectancy. In other African countries, it’s even lower. The world’s oldest country is Germany, where the median age is 45.
   The pattern is very clear: The young countries are poor, and the old countries are rich. So why do people fear population aging? I see two reasons. The first is psychological: The analogy to individual aging suggests that as populations get older, they grow frail and lose mental acuity. The second comes from economists and an indicator called the dependency ratio, which assumes that every adult below age 65 contributes to society, and everybody above 65 is a burden. And the proportion of people older than 65 is bound to increase.
   Yet we also know that the productivity of some individuals is much higher than that of others, independent of age. Nothing is inherently special about the age of 65. Many people live longer and do so mostly in good health. The saying "seventy is the new 60" has a sound scientific basis. Meanwhile, education has been shown to be a key determinant of better health, longer life and higher productivity (not to mention open-mindedness). The active aging of better-educated populations can be an asset rather than a problem.
   To appreciate how projections based on the simplistic dependency ratio can be misleading, consider the two population billionaires, China and India. In 2050 China’s population will be older than India’s because of its more rapid fertility decline. But so what? China’s population is much better educated and therefore much more productive. Furthermore, only a minority of Chinese will retire at age 65. We can expect most Chinese to make meaningful contributions through work as long as they are in good health, particularly if they find their jobs interesting and satisfying. Again, this is largely a question of education. In India today, one out of three adults has never seen a school from the inside. In China only 8 percent, mostly elderly, have no schooling. In India, 50 percent of young women have less than a junior secondary education; in China, the figure is only 15 percent. Knowing how important education is to economic performance, who would seriously claim that India’s future is brighter than China’s owing to slower aging?
   Population aging is not irrelevant, but it should be seen in conjunction with other dimensions of human capital, especially education and health. Here the prospects are good. In most countries of the world — with the notable exception of the United States — the young are clearly better educated than the old and may thus compensate for their smaller numbers through higher productivity.
   Viewing the quality of human capital as resting on a collection of elements, many of them manageable, is something that the private sector has been doing for a long time. Every sizable business pays attention to human resource management. For governments, the equivalent would be a form of national human resource management that considers education, migration, family, labor, health, and retirement as components that interact richly — and together drive the richness of the future. [br] What can we infer from the last paragraph?
选项 A、Healthier people can enhance productivity.
B、Elderly people are the majority group in most countries.
C、Human capital contains many manageable components.
D、Private businesses focus more on the aging problem.
答案 C
解析    语义推理。以infer为核心词的问题均涉及语义推理。本段的核心词为human capital，整段就私企的作为和政府应承担的责任予以了阐述。由于第一句明确表示“Viewing the quality of human capital as resting on a collection of elements，many of them manageable”，所以基本不需推理也可与选项C对应起来。
   语义推理指依据词项之间的语义关系而进行的推理。其形式主要有三类：(1)同义关系推理；(2)下义关系推理；(3)反义关系推理。一般命题思路为：题干给出一些前提和条件，要求结合特定的语境，根据它们之间的语义关联，推知可以得出的结论。语义推理不依靠严格的逻辑推理形式，而主要通过揭示前提和条件之间的语义关联。这是逻辑判断题的最常见命题思路。
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