Last September, the U.S. government announced that its birthrate fell to "another record low". Morally speaking, there’s nothing

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问题     Last September, the U.S. government announced that its birthrate fell to "another record low". Morally speaking, there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s【C1】________ in a way. All over the world, birthrates tend to fall a-long with economic development.
    The thing about an increasingly childless economy is that it has major implications for【C2】________. It is confirmed by a new data from a Gallup survey【C3】________on the average daily spending of families. Even after you control for income, age, education, and【C4】________status, families with young kids spend more every day.
    What are parents spending on? Not just books, toys, and games. The Department of Agriculture【C5】________ surveys the many ways we spend on our kids, to the tune of about $14,000 a year. The【C6】________majority of money goes to the【C7】________: housing, food, transportation, and education. Housing is kind of funny, because young children tend not to have their housing units,【C8】________the parents are extremely well-off and the children are terribly misbehaved. The survey estimates the housing portion of spending by trying to【C9】________a few factors: the cost of an extra bedroom, the cost of moving into safer【C10】________with better schools, and the cost of buying homes with larger yards.
    It is【C11】________that on economic growth, some of the most discussed variables on editorial pages and cable news are policy choices like tax rates or international events. But buried【C12】________these headlines is the glacier of demographics, the steady and unyielding force of human numbers to【C13】________the economy. The【C14】________in U.S. birthrates in recent years has almost certainly had a negative effect on consumer spending (and,【C15】________, lower birthrates are probably an outcome of the recession). In particular, childless couples don’t need space for more kids so they’re less【C16】________to buy homes in the suburbs,【C17】________demand for housing that badly needs to sell more homes. In other words,【C18】________families and less household formation【C19】________the U.S. economy of housing and transportation spending, which has historically accounted for half of family【C20】________.
【C5】

选项 A、lately
B、fairly
C、annually
D、hardly

答案C

解析 此句表明,农业部的调查指出父母每年(a year)花在孩子身上的钱每年高达14000美元。调查结果的数据是按“每年”或“一年”来计算的,可推测其调查是每年进行的。C项annually“每年地”与a year呼应。A项lately“最近地”,表示最近农业部做了调查,但survey所用的一般现在时时态表示调查应是经常性的,两种间存在矛盾。B项fairly“相当地”常表示程度,不符合逻辑要求。D项hardly“几乎不”,表明农业部几乎不做调查,语义逻辑不对。
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