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】______.
【C13】

选项 A、conquer
B、handle
C、describe
D、shape

答案D

解析 第二段提到出生率的下降会导致消费的下降,可见人类活动能决定经济的某些要素。D项shape意为“塑造,对(某人或某事物)有重大影响;决定(某事物)的性质”,可表明人口数量对经济有极大的影响作用,符合语义和逻辑要求。
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