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.
From the first paragraph, we could learn that________.

选项 A、allowances should be allocated based on hierarchy
B、the lack of suitable policies causes the poor suffering
C、enough policies have been issued to eliminate poverty
D、child poverty does not deserve much attention

答案B

解析 根据题干信息定位至第一段。解题思路可以先找段落的主旨句和重点信息。首句指出,长期以来,美国一直抵制合平需要的扶贫政策,因为公众的想法已根深蒂固:不管穷人遭受什么痛苦,要为自己的处境负责的是他们自己,但儿童贫困问题的危害太大,不容忽视。由此可知,民众反对扶贫政策,导致贫困问题一直未得到解决。选项B“相应政策的缺失导致穷人受苦”是原文的同义表述,故为正确答案。选项A“应该分级补贴”与第一段最后一句A growing number of academics believe there is a solution: the government should give monthly cash allowances, without conditions, to every family with kids (越来越多的学者认为有一个解决办法:政府应该每月无条件地给每个有孩子的家庭发放现金补贴)的信息不符。选项C和选项D都是针对首句进行设题,选项C“美国已经颁布了足够的政策以消除贫困”,选项D“儿童贫困不值得太多关注”均与原文不符。
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