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  3. For the first time in history, the Earth has more people over the age of 65 than under the age of five. In another two decades t

For the first time in history, the Earth has more people over the age of 65 than under the age of five. In another two decades t

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问题     For the first time in history, the Earth has more people over the age of 65 than under the age of five. In another two decades the ratio will be two-to-one, according to a recent analysis by Torsten Sl0k of Deutsche Bank. The trend has economists worried about everything from soaring pension costs to " secular stagnation" —the chronically weak growth that comes from having too few investment opportunities to absorb available savings. The world’s greying is inevitable.
    Ageing slows growth in several ways. One is that there are fewer new workers to boost output. Workforces in some 40 countries are already shrinking because of demographic change. As the number of elderly people increases, governments may neglect growth-boosting public investment in education and infrastructure in favour of spending on pensions and health care. People in work, required to support ever more pensioners, must pay higher taxes. But the biggest hit to growth comes from weakening productivity. A study published in 2016, for example, examined economic performance across American states. It found that a rise of 10% in the share of a state’s population that is over 60 cuts the growth rate of output per person by roughly half a percentage point, with two-thirds of that decline due to weaker growth in productivity.
    Why are older economies less productive? The answer is not, as one might suppose, that older workers are. Though some capabilities, notably physical ones, deteriorate with age, the overall effect is not dramatic. A study of Germany’s manufacturing sector published in 2016 failed to detect a drop-off in productivity in workers up to the age of 60. Companies can tweak employees’ roles as they get older in order to make best use of the advantages of age, such as extensive experience and professional connections.
    Furthermore, if weak productivity growth was caused by older workers producing less, pay patterns should reflect that. Wages would tend to rise at the beginning of a career and fall towards its end. But that is not what usually happens. Rather, according to a recent paper by economists at Moody’s Analytics, a consultancy, wages are lower for everyone in companies with lots of older workers. It is not older workers’ falling productivity that seems to hold back the economy, but their influence on those around them. That influence is potent; the authors reckon that as much as a percentage point of America’s recent decline in annual productivity growth could be associated with ageing.
    How this influence makes itself felt is unclear. But the authors suggest that companies with more older workers might be less eager to embrace new technologies. That might be because they are reluctant to make investments that would require employees to be retrained, given the shorter period over which they could hope to make a return on that training for those near the end of their careers. Or older bosses might be to blame. Research indicates that younger managers are more likely to adopt new technologies than are older ones. This may seem obvious; older people’s greater aversion to new technology is a cliche. And at least anecdotally, greying industries do seem more averse to change.
    If the evidence suggested that ageing economies struggled primarily because of slow-growing labour forces and fast-growing pension costs, it would make sense to focus policy efforts on keeping people in work longer—by raising retirement ages, for example. But if, as seems to be the case, reluctance to embrace new technologies is a bigger issue, other goals should take priority—in particular, boosting competition. In America, increasing industrial concentration and persistently high profits are spurring renewed interest in antitrust rules. The benefits of breaking up powerful firms and increasing competition might be even bigger than thought, if conservative old firms are thereby spurred to make better use of newer technologies.
    There are other measures that could help. Removing barriers to job-switching, for example by making benefits more portable, could shorten average tenures and help stop companies’ cultures becoming ossified. Best of all would be more immigration. An influx of young foreign workers would address nearly all the ways in which population ageing depresses growth. It would not only expand the labour force and create new taxpayers, but would mean more and younger companies, and greater openness to new technologies. And there would be plenty of willing takers in poorer countries with younger populations.
The economists worry about an aging society because ________.
选项 A、economic growth will be slow or even stagnant
B、it will lead to a greater national medical burden
C、old people cannot create more wealth for the country
D、an ageing society will send pension costs soaring
答案A
解析 细节题。根据题干提示可定位到第一段。第一段中提到经济学家担心在老龄化社会投资机会太少，无法吸收可用储蓄，导致长期经济增长疲软，社会经济将长期停滞，因此和[A]选项一致。[B][C][D]选项内容没有提及。
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