Parenthood isn’t a career-killer. The effect of parenthood is not that severe as people imagine. In fact, economists with two or

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问题     Parenthood isn’t a career-killer. The effect of parenthood is not that severe as people imagine. In fact, economists with two or more kids tend to produce more research, not less, than their one-child or childless colleagues. But female economists in particular can pay a price in terms of productivity after becoming mothers, especially if they’ re young or unmarried.
    That’ s, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a working paper("Parenthood and Productivity of Highly Skilled Labour: Evidence from the Grove of Academe")published this month by Matthias Krapf of the University of Zurich, Heinrich Ursprung of the University of Konstanz and Christian Zimmermann of the regional reserve bank.
    "There is a widespread conviction that motherhood is extremely costly in terms of professional career advancement. In particular, it is often argued that the only way for young women to make a challenging career is to remain childless," they wrote. "Our study of the academic labour market arrives at a somewhat less dreary picture: we do not observe a family gap in research productivity among female academic economists. Moreover, motherhood-induced decreases in research productivity are less pronounced than usually purported."
    The authors in early 2012 surveyed about 10,000 economists through the Research Papers in Economics online platform, matching the academics’ answers with their publication records. They gauged an economist’ s productivity by looking at their output: published research, weighted by journal quality. Some of their findings are as follows:
    "Mothers of at least two children are, on average, more productive than mothers of only one child, and mothers in general are more productive than childless women. Fathers of at least two children are also more productive than fathers of one child and childless men. Toward the end of their careers, however, childless men appear to be somewhat more productive than fathers of one child."
    Parenthood does appear linked to lower productivity while the children are 12 and younger: mothers average a 17.4% loss, while fathers average a 5% loss. A female economist with three children, on average, loses the equivalent of four years of research output by the time her kids become teenagers.
    Women who are married or in a stable relationship "do not have any drop in research productivity in the three years following childbirth." For single mothers, research output drops by roughly a third over the same period.
    Female economists who have their first child before the age of 30 are less productive, while "for older first-time mothers, the effect remains negative, but it is much smaller and lacks statistical significance."
    Male economists without tenure become more productive after having a child, while tenured male economists won’t be more productive. There is no similar effect for female economists.
The word "dreary"(Line 4, Para. 3)may mean______.

选项 A、exciting.
B、relieved
C、inspiring
D、downcast

答案D

解析 语义题。单词dreary修饰名词picture,因此该词应是形容词,根据picture后的句子We do not observe a family gap in research productivity among femaleacademic economists.“我们没有发现女性学术型经济学家的学术研究效率因拥有家庭而出现差距。”这一消息属正面信息,会带给人积极的力量,而dreary由比较级less修饰,因此,dreary一定带有非正面意义,选项中,只有D项downcast“沮丧的”是非正面意义,且符合文意。
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