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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】________.
【C13】
选项 A、conquer
B、handle
C、describe
D、shape
答案D
解析 第二段提到出生率的下降会导致消费的下降，可见人类活动能决定经济的某些要素。D项shape意为“塑造，对(某人或某事物)有重大影响；决定(某事物)的性质”，可表明人口数量对经济有极大的影响作用。符合语义和逻辑要求。A项conquer“征服”指对经济的彻底控制，这与现实不符。B项handle“处理；对付”和C项describe“描述”代入后都不符合语义要求，上下文也无相关的语义提示。
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