OG P384 人力资本理论 文章详解加解题分析

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In the seventeenth-century Florentine textileindustry, women were employed primarily in low paying, low-skill jobs. Toexplain this segregation of labor by gender, economists have relied on the useful theory of human capital. 【主旨句，提出“人力资本”理论来解释一个现象，因此后文肯定是围绕这个理论来展开的。另外，注意作者在提起这个理论时用了一个形容词“useful”，那么可以肯定的是作者对这个理论持有积极的态度】

According to this theory, investment in humancapital—the acquisition of difficult job-related skills—generally benefitsindividuals by making them eligible to engage in well-paid occupations. 【解释这个理论的基本内容，下文展开的基础】

Women’s role as child bearers, however,results in interruptions in their participation in the job market (as comparedwith men’s) and thus reduces their opportunities to acquire training for highlyskilled work. 【分论点一，女性“childbearing”的社会角色导致她们无法接受职前培训】

In addition, the human capital theory explains why therewas a high concentration of women workers in certain low-skill jobs, such as weaving,but not in others, such as combing or carding, by positing that because oftheir primary responsibility in child rearing women took occupations that couldbe carried out in the home.【分论点二，女性“child rearing”的社会角色导致她们在低技能工作中又只能从事能带回家的工作】

第一段翻译：

在17世纪福罗伦萨的纺织工业中，女性主要受雇于低报酬、低技能的工作。经济学家们依靠人力资本的有用理论来解释这种由性别造成的劳动歧视。根据这一理论，对人力资本的投资（即对不同相关工作技能的获取）通常通过对劳动者培训，使之合格地适用于高薪职业而使之获利。然而，女性生儿育女的角色使得他们工作市场时（与男性相比）受到干扰，因此也就减少了他们接受高技能工作培训的机会。另外，人力资本理论指出，因为女性的首要职责是抚养孩子，所以她们选择能带回家完成的工作，这解释了为什么特定低技术职业（例如编织）会聚集大量女性工人，而在其他的低技术工作中（例如纺梳或纺车）却没有出现这种现象。

There were, however,differences in pay scales that cannot be explained by the human capital theory.【转折，说明HC理论有所不足，至此我们可以把握文章的结构：第一段用理论解释了开头陈述的现象，第二段则指出该理论存在的不足，可见作者对这一理论的看法是比较全面且辩证的】

For example, male construction workers were paidsignificantly higher wages than female taffeta weavers.【举例说明HC理论存在的不足】

The wagedifference between these two low-skill occupations stems from the segregationof labor by gender: because a limited number of occupations were open towomen, there was a large supply of workers in their fields, and this"overcrowding" resulted in women receiving lower wages and menreceiving higher wages.【解释为什么同样是低技术工作而男工人的工资水平明显高于女工人】

第二段翻译：

然而，工资标准的差异却不能用人力资本理论来解释。例如，男性建筑工人的工资显著高于女性塔夫绸织布工人。这两种低技能工作间的工资差异源于性别不同而引起的劳动分离（即性别造成的劳动力歧视）：因为只有少量的工作向女性开放，而在这些领域中有大量的劳动力供给，这种供过于求就导致了女性工资更低而男性工资更高。

42. The passagesuggests that combing and carding differ from weaving in that combing

and carding were

(A) low-skill jobsperformed primarily by women employees

(B) low-skill jobsthat were not performed in the home

(C) low-skill jobsperformed by both male and female employees

(D) high-skill jobsperformed outside the home

(E) high-skill jobsperformed by both male and female employees

【看到“suggest”，明白是推论题，在看到“weaving”“carding”“combing”定位于第一段末尾，第二个分论点，问纺梳和纺车跟纺织有什么不同，这三项工作都是低技术含量，排除D、E；又第二个分论点指出了编织工作的一个显著不同：可以带回家做，这也是为什么女性工人选择这种工作的原因，因此纺梳和纺车跟编织的不同肯定就是不能带回家了，选B】

43. Which of thefollowing, if true, would most weaken the explanation provided by the humancapital theory for women’s concentration in certain occupations inseventeenth-century Florence?

(A)Women were unlikely to work outside the home even in occupations whose hourswere flexible enough to allow women to accommodate domestic tasks as well aspaid labor.
(B)Parents were less likely to teach occupational skills to their daughters thanthey were to their sons.
(C)Women’s participation in the Florentine paid labor force grew steadilythroughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
(D)The vast majority of female weavers in the Florentine wool industry hadchildren.
(E)Few women worked as weavers in the Florentine silk industry, which was devotedto making cloths that required a high degree of skill to produce.

【看到题干中提及的17世纪福罗伦萨劳工性别歧视问题，是全文讨论的问题，一个大的概念，所以肯定是结构题。题目针对的是HC理论的解释，定位第一段，第一段一共两个分论点，一个是女性“childbearing”的社会角色，另一个是女性“child rearing”的社会角色，所以要想削弱HC理论的解释就只要针对这两个分论点中的任意一个削弱即可。看A，说女性根本就不喜欢出去工作，而不是因为要照顾家务才选择在家工作，针对第二个分论点削弱；B，没有针对第一段解释的两个分论点来削弱，原文并没有提及，而且也是支持HC理论的；C，与原文无关；D和E完全是支持HC理论的，所以选A】

44. The author of the passage would be most likelyto describe the explanation provided by the human capital theory for the highconcentration of women in certain occupations in the seventeenth-centuryFlorentine textile industry as
(A)well founded though incomplete
(B)difficult to articulate
(C)plausible but poorly substantiated
(D)seriously flawed
(E)contrary to recent research

【结构题，问作者对HC理论的态度，第一段黑体字的“useful”就很好的说明了作者对这个理论肯定是持积极态度的，而第二段的转折则表示作者看到了这个理论存在的问题，所以作者对这一理论的看法肯定是两方面的，因此可以直接排除B、D、E；而C中说的“sustained”明显不对，因为第二段只是对HC理论的补充，说明其并不完整，并没有涉及证实HC理论的问题；所以选A，结合了作者积极的态度和第二段中提及的存在的问题】