GMAT_2772大全 passage 5/63 第7,9题 问一下

gedn01

How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship. Unemployment does not have the same dire consequences today as it did in the 1930’s when most of the unemployed were primary breadwinners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably mitigated the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship(7). Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the overwhelming majority are from multiple-earner, relatively affluent families. Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies.

Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. Since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month(7), those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffer. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another working part-time because of the inability to find full-time work, or else outside the labor force but wanting a job. Finally, income transfers in our country have always focused on the elderly, disabled, and dependent, neglecting the needs of the working poor(6), so that the dramatic expansion of cash and in-kind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failing in the labor market are adequately protected.

As a result of such contradictory evidence, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of labor market problems number in the hundreds of thousands or the tens of millions, and, hence, whether high levels of joblessness can be tolerated or must be countered by job creation and economic stimulus. There is only one area of agreement in this debate—that the existing poverty, employment, and earnings statistics are inadequate for one their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.
7.According to the passage, one factor that causes unemployment and earnings figures to overpredict the amount of economic hardship is the

(A) recurrence of periods of unemployment for a group of low-wage workers
(B) possibility that earnings may be received from more than one job per worker
(C) fact that unemployment counts do not include those who work for low wages and remain poor
(D) establishment of a system of record-keeping that makes it possible to compile poverty statistics（E）

(E) prevalence, among low-wage workers and the unemployed, of members of families in which others are employed-->原文哪里有说？

9.Which of the following, if true, is the best criticism of the author’s argument concerning why poverty statistics cannot properly be used to show the effects of problems in the labor market?

(A) A short-term increase in the number of those in poverty can indicate a shortage of jobs because the basic number of those unable to accept employment remains approximately constant.-->看不出来原文有这说明
(B) For those who are in poverty as a result of joblessness, there are social programs available that provide a minimum standard of living.
(C) Poverty statistics do not consistently agree with earnings statistics, when each is taken as a measure of hardship resulting from unemployment.
(D) The elderly and handicapped categories include many who previously were employed in the labor market.（A）

(E) Since the labor market is global in nature, poor workers in one country are competing with poor workers in another with respect to the level of wages and the existence of jobs.

gedn01

ｕｐ

cicijinlan

第七题：Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed。说明在低收入家庭中已经不止一个breadwinner了。
第九题：poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies.这个作者说的是这些poverty数据跟labor market的问题之间没有关系，但最后的weaken作者的说法就是有关系，A就是说短期内事能反映问题的。个人见解，仅供参考

Dongkailun

个人认为，第7题问题问的是：什么因素导致了失业率和赚钱数量对经济困难的过度估计，注意是过度预测，说明原意是经济困难没那么严重。所以答案就要选择有扩大失业率和减少赚钱数量的角度过度估计，那么E选项就很好的说明了这个问题。说白了就是到加强题。