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  3. How many people are suffering from labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questio

How many people are suffering from labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questio

admin2010-09-25  41
问题      How many people are suffering from 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 (可怕的) consequences today as it did in the 1930s 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 (减轻) the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the overwhelming majority is from multiple earners, 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 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, 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 suffers. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another part-time working because of the inability to find fulltime 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, so that the dramatic expansion of cash and in kind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failings 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 of their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.  
Which of the following proposals best responds to the issues raised by the author?
选项 A、Innovative programmes using multiple approaches should be set up to reduce the level of unemployment.
B、A compromise should be found between the positions Of those who view joblessness an evil greater than economic control and those who hold the opposite view.
C、New statistical indices should be developed to measure the degree to which unemployment and inadequately paid employment cause suffering.
D、Consideration should be given to the ways in which statistics can act as partial causes of the phenomena that they purport to measure.
答案C
解析 推断题。文章先讲了现行统计数据会夸大实际失业问题，接着又从另一方面谈到这些数据会低估这一状况，其论据之一就是收入不足以维持生计的人口并未列入统计数据中。C项说新的统计指数能够反映出什么程度的失业和什么程度的在业但收入不足会真正带来困境，这正好可以弥补作者提出的现行统计数据的两大不足，故选C。
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