America has long been resistant to adequate poverty policies because of its strong strain of thinking that the poor are responsi

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问题     America has long been resistant to adequate poverty policies because of its strong strain of thinking that the poor are responsible for their own situations, no matter their suffering, but child poverty is too harmful to ignore. A growing number of academics believe there is a solution: the government should give monthly cash allowances, without conditions, to every family with kids.
    Today the official poverty line for a family of four in the U.S. is about $26,200, but a 2013 Gallup survey found that people think a family of four must earn $58,000 on average just to get by. In fact, the ideal definition of a useful poverty measure would be this: the level below which we know that short-and long-term damage is being done to children.
    A mountain of evidence now shows that poverty can lead to cognitive and emotional damage in children. Despite policies that have expanded access to insurance, poor kids are still less healthy than the rest of the young population. They also drop out of school at higher rates, earn less money over time and are jailed far more often than their better-off peers. That should be enough for us to recognize that child poverty is actually a moral tragedy. When Michael Harrington’s classic book, The Other America, called attention to America’s general poverty rate of about 25% in 1962, Washington developed social programs that brought the rate down sharply, but they are not enough: 1 in 3 children does not receive the full benefits of these programs.
    Poor children have many needs, but research shows that money may matter most. Researchers found that poorer children have worse cognitive, social-behaviour and health outcomes which is seldom correlated with other household and parental characteristics. A family with two children receiving $300 to $400 a month per child could improve their standard of living immediately. It can also help reduce family stress and help parents provide a psychologically nourishing environment in which learning and social development can germinate. Yet both the left and the right dismiss direct cash aid as a waste and an inducement to laziness and abuse, which is just as the historian Michael Katz correctly notes, "One of the odd aspects of the history of writing about poverty is the avoidance of the simple view that people are poor because they lack money."
    Maybe it is time to implement some practical and efficient policy for a nation too willing to neglect its poor.
The most effective solution to poor children may be________.

选项 A、financial aid
B、family care
C、social insurance
D、public policy

答案A

解析 根据题干关键词The most effective solution定位至第四段第一句:贫困儿童有很多需求,但是研究表明,钱可能是最重要的(money may matter most),故选项A是正确选项,其中financial是money的同义替换。选项C“社会保险”和选项D“公共政策”在原文中并未提及,故排除。第四段第二句提到Researchers found that…which is seldom correlated with other household and parental characteristics(研究人员发现……很少与其他家庭因素和双亲性格有关),所以选项B“家庭关爱”并不是最有效的解决办法,故排除。
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