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  3. How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy ques

How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy ques

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问题     How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship. Unemployment does not have the same dire consequences today as it did in the 1930’s when most of the unemployed were primary breadwinners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably mitigated the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the overwhelming majority are from multiple-earner, relatively affluent families. Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies.
    Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. Since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month, those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffer. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another working part-time because of the inability to find full-time work, or else outside the labor force but wanting a job. Finally, income transfers in our country have always focused on the elderly, disabled, and dependent, neglecting the needs of the working poor, so that the dramatic expansion of cash and in-kind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failing in the labor market are adequately protected.
    As a result of such contradictory evidence, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of labor market problems number in the hundreds of thousands or the tens of millions, and, hence, whether high levels of joblessness can be tolerated or must be countered by job creation and economic stimulus. There is only one area of agreement in this debate that the existing poverty, employment, and earnings statistics are inadequate for one their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.
Which of the following is the principal topic of the passage?
选项 A、What causes labor market pathologies that result in suffering
B、Why income measures are imprecise in measuring degrees of poverty
C、Where the areas of agreement are among poverty, employment, and earnings figures
D、How social statistics give an unclear picture of the degree of hardship caused by low wages and insufficient employment opportunities
答案D
解析 主旨题。原文以问题How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems?引出话题，然后在第一段第三句，第二段首句为所在段落的主题句，分别论述了社会统计数字如何夸大或低估了劳动力市场上存在的问题，尾段首句对前面的分析加以总结：数据不足以反映劳动力市场的困难。分析各个段落的大意可以确定答案为D。文章主旨题一般为第一道题，所以解题的技巧就是放在最后做，因为做其他题时，考生会逐步了解文章的各个细节，在做题的过程中就会对文章有个总的理解，最后处理主旨题就变得容易。
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