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  3. Last September, the U.S. government announced that its birthrate fell to "another record low". Morally speaking, there’s nothing

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】________.
【C16】
选项 A、silly
B、likely
C、costly
D、lively
答案B
解析 前半句提到没有孩子的夫妇不需要为孩子提供房间，是本句的因，关联词so表明后半句为果，说明这些夫妇不会去买郊区的房子。B项likely“可能的”与less搭配，指他们不太可能去买房，故正确。通过上文的语义提示和so一词的逻辑推理。只能判断夫妇们买房的可能性，而不是对他们买房行为进行评判，因此“愚蠢的”(A项silly)和“爽快的”(D项lively)可排除。C项costly意为 “昂贵的”，其主语应为消费品。
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