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  3. During the recession, job losses were not equitably shared; employment rates fell more for some groups than others. It is also w

During the recession, job losses were not equitably shared; employment rates fell more for some groups than others. It is also w

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问题     During the recession, job losses were not equitably shared; employment rates fell more for some groups than others. It is also well known that job losses were greater among men than among women— the so-called mancession—largely because men had been more likely to work in the residential construction and manufacturing industries that were hit hardest.
    What I’m going to reveal is the employment rates separately for married women and unmarried women who were heads of households. Not surprisingly, the latter are somewhat more likely to work. More surprising is that employment rates fell so much more for these unmarried women who were heads of household. Employment per capita fell 4.7 percentage points among the latter, compared with 1.6 percentage points among the former. The job-loss gap associated with marital status turns out to be as large as the more widely recognized job loss gap associated with gender.
    Neither group of women had many members working in construction, so the decline of construction cannot explain these differences. An " added-worker effect" has been observed during a number of recessions; more married women worked during a recession than during an expansion because wives sometimes begin work to help replace the income lost by their unemployed husbands.
    The employment rate among nonelderly married men fell 4 percentage points, to 83 percent from 87 percent. While that is a large decline by historical standards, it still means that roughly 95 percent of wives whose husbands were employed in 2007 had husbands who continued their employment during the recession. Among the 5 percent of wives who were not so fortunate, roughly two-thirds of them had already been working before the recession and therefore could not react to their husband’s unemployment by starting work. Therefore the added-worker effect is much too small to explain the sharply different job-loss rates by marital status.
    What seems to be especially different between married and unmarried women is their propensity to be unemployed for long periods. The point is that married and unmarried women enter unemployment at about the same rate, but unmarried women leave it more slowly. Part of the difference in labor-market experiences has to do with the safety net. Many safety-net programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps, and Medicaid, base eligibility on family income. A married woman is usually ineligible for a number of safety-net programs because her family’s income is above the poverty line regardless of her employment status.
    Unmarried household heads, on the other hand, are usually the sole breadwinner for the family, and when their income falls to zero, the household income essentially does, too. For this reason, more unmarried women who are heads of households can expect anti-poverty programs to help them when they are out of work than married women can. An unintended but unavoidable consequence of providing someone a cushion when they are without work is that they are provided with less incentive to get back to work.
The most surprising gap between unmarried woman and married is______.
选项 A、the differentiated employment rate before recession
B、the differentiated laid-off rate in recession
C、the differentiated liability to remain unemployed after recession
D、the differentiated tendency in career selection
答案C
解析 这一题有一定的难度。第二段中提到，在经济危机之前，未婚女性的就业率略高于已婚女性，这是因为前者在供养家庭方面没有配偶的帮助，这一点不足为奇(Not surprisingly)。因此，我们可以首先将[A]排除。[B]、[C]需要放在一起进行辨析。第二段中提到，令人大跌眼镜的是，在萧条时期，那些要养家糊口的未婚女性的就业率出现了大幅下滑。未婚女性的人均就业率下降了4．7％，而已婚女性的下降比例仅为1．6％。很多同学会根据这一段话选择[B]。但是如果读到下文第五段处，就会发现[B]并不准确。第五段中明确指出，What seems to be especially different between married and unmarried women is their propensity to be unemployed for long periods(已婚女性和未婚女性最令人感到惊异的差异是她们在经济危机之后持续失业的比率。)经济危机开始时，两者的失业率大致相当，但未婚女性脱离失业状态的速度较慢。因此，根据这一段的内容，我们可以做出判断，[B]错误，而[C]才是正确的。[D]已婚女性和未婚女性的择业倾向差异，是错误答案，因为文章第三段中明确指出他们在职业方面并不存在明显差异。
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