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  3. This fall the Pew Research Center, in association with TIME, conducted a nationwide poll exploring the contours of modern marria

This fall the Pew Research Center, in association with TIME, conducted a nationwide poll exploring the contours of modern marria

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问题     This fall the Pew Research Center, in association with TIME, conducted a nationwide poll exploring the contours of modern marriage and the new American family. And of all the transformations our family structures have undergone in the past 50 years, perhaps the most profound is the marriage differential that has opened between the rich and the poor. In 1960 the median household income of married adults was 12% higher than that of single adults, after adjusting for household size. By 2008 this gap had grown to 41% . In other words, the richer and more educated you are,the more likely you are to marry,or to be married — or, conversely, if you’re married, you’re more likely to be well off.
    To begin the question of why the wealth disparity between the married and the unmarried has grown so much,it might be useful to take a look at the brief but illustrative marriage of golfer Greg Norman and tennis star Chris Evert, who married in June 2008 and divorced 15 months later. From all reports, their union had many of the classic hallmarks of modern partnerships. The bride and groom had roughly equal success in their careers. Being wealthy, sporty and blond,they had similar interests.
    This is typical of the way many marriages start. Americans are increasingly marrying people who are on the same socioeconomic and educational level. Since more women than men have graduated from college for several decades, it’s more likely than it used to be that a male college graduate will meet, fall in love with, wed and share the salary of a woman with a degree. Women’s advances in education have roughly paralleled the growth of the knowledge economy, so the slice of the family bacon she brings home will be substantial.
    On the face of it, this might explain why fewer people are married. They want to finish college first. In 2010 the median age of men getting hitched for the first time is 28. 2 ,and for women it’s 26. 1. It’s gone up about a year every decade since the ’60s.
    But here’s the rub. In the past two decades, people with only a high school education started to get married even later than college graduates. In 1990 more high-school-educated couples than college graduates had made it to the altar by age 30. By 2007 it was the other way around. What has brought about the switch? It’s not any disparity in desire. According to the Pew survey, 46% of college graduates want to get married, and 44% of the less educated do.
    Promising publicly to be someone’s partner for life used to be something people did to lay the foundation of their independent life. It was the declaration of adulthood. Now it’s more of a finishing touch,the last brick in the edifice,sociologists believe. "Marriage is the capstone for both the college-educated and the less well educated," says Johns Hopkins’ Cherlin. " The college-educated wait until they’re finished with their education and their careers are launched. The less educated wait until they feel comfortable financially. " But that comfort keeps getting more elusive. "The loss of decent-paying jobs that a high-school-educated man or woman could get makes it difficult for them to get and stay married," says Cherlin. As the knowledge economy has overtaken the manufacturing economy, couples in which both partners’ job opportunities are disappearing are doubly disadvantaged. So they wait to get married.
The less-educated tend to marry later than the well-educated due to the changes of______.
选项 A、economic structure
B、social structure
C、political structure
D、educational structure
答案A
解析 本题考查对最后两段内容的理解。最后两段是作者论述的重点，也真正解释了已婚者和未婚者婚姻差距拉大的原因。因为人们倾向于和有同样社会经济背景的人结婚，因此知识分子往往相互吸引，而学历不高者也经常走到一起。同时因为现在的年轻人都倾向于在经济稳定之后再结婚，因此婚姻往往受经济因素的牵绊最多。而最后一段倒数第二句话明确指出，随着“工业经济”向“知识经济”转型，没有受过高等教育的人想要找到一份体面的工作越来越难，他们经济上成熟的时间要比受过高等教育的人晚，自然走入婚姻殿堂的时间也要更晚一些。而“工业经济”向“知识经济”的转变反映的正是经济结构的转型，因此[A]为正确答案。虽然经济转型会带来[B]所说的社会转型，但是就题目而言，我们不应该做过多的延伸。[C]属无中生有。虽然education一词在文中多次出现，但是[D]“教育结构”一词指的是包括基础教育、职业技术教育等各种不同类型和层次的教学组合及比例构成，和本文讨论的受教育程度对婚姻产生的影响不是同一个概念。
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