首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Into the Unknown The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope? [A] Until the early 1990s nobody mu
Into the Unknown The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope? [A] Until the early 1990s nobody mu
admin
2013-08-30
62
问题
Into the Unknown
The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope?
[A] Until the early 1990s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older.The UN had the foresight to convene a “world assembly on ageing” back in 1982, but that came and went. By 1994 the World Bank had noticed that something big was happening. In a report entitled “Averting the Old Age Crisis”, it argued that pension arrangements in most countries were unsustainable.
[B] For the next ten years a succession of books, mainly by Americans, sounded the alarm. They had titles like Young vs Old, Gray Dawn and The Coming Generational Storm, and their message was blunt: health-care systems were heading for the rocks, pensioners were taking young people to the cleaners, and soon there would be intergenerational warfare.
[C] Since then the debate has become less emotional, not least because a lot more is known about the subject. Books, conferences and research papers have multiplied. International organisations such as the OECD and the EU issue regular reports. Population ageing is on every agenda, from G8 economic conferences to NATO summits. The World Economic Forum plans to consider the future of pensions and health care at its prestigious Davos conference early next year. The media, including this newspaper, are giving the subject extensive coverage.
[D] Whether all that attention has translated into sufficient action is another question. Governments in rich countries now accept that their pension and health-care promises will soon become unaffordable, and many of them have embarked on reforms, but so far only timidly. That is not surprising: politicians with an eye on the next election will hardly rush to introduce unpopular measures that may not bear fruit for years, perhaps decades.
[E] The outline of the changes needed is clear. To avoid fiscal (财政的) meltdown, public pensions and health-care provision will have to be reined back severely and taxes may have to go up. By far the most effective method to restrain pension spending is to give people the opportunity to work longer, because it increases tax revenues and reduces spending on pensions at the same time. It may even keep them alive longer. John Rother, the AARP’s head of policy and strategy, points to studies showing that other things being equal, people who remain at work have lower death rates than their retired peers.
[F] Younger people today mostly accept that they will have to work for longer and that their pensions will be less generous. Employers still need to persuaded that older workers are worth holding on to. That may be because they have had plenty of younger ones to choose from, partly thanks to the post-war baby-boom and partly because over the past few decades many more women have entered the labour force, increasing employers’ choice. But the reservoir of women able and willing to take up paid work is running low, and the baby-boomers are going grey.
[G]In many countries immigrants have been filling such gaps in the labour force as have already emerged (and remember that the real shortage is still around ten years off). Immigration in the developed world is the highest it has ever been, and it is making a useful difference. In still-fertile America it currently accounts for about 40% of total population growth, and in fast-ageing western Europe for about 90%.
[H] On the face of it, it seems the perfect solution. Many developing countries have lots of young people in need of jobs; many rich countries need helping hands that will boost tax revenues and keep up economic growth. But over the next few decades labour forces in rich countries are set to shrink so much that inflows of immigrants would have to increase enormously to compensate: to at least twice their current size in western Europe’s most youthful countries, and three times in the older ones. Japan would need a large multiple of the few immigrants it has at present. Public opinion polls show that people in most rich countries already think that immigration is too high. Further big increases would be politically unfeasible.
[I] To tackle the problem of ageing populations at its root, “old” countries would have to rejuvenate (使年轻) themselves by having more of their own children. A number of them have tried, some more successfully than others. But it is not a simple matter of offering financial incentives or providing more child care. Modern urban life in rich countries is not well adapted to large families. Women find it hard to combine family and career. They often compromise by having just one child.
[J] And if fertility in ageing countries does not pick up? It will not be the end of the world, at least not for quite a while yet, but the world will slowly become a different place. Older societies may be less innovative and more strongly disinclined to take risks than younger ones. By 2025 at the latest, about half the voters in America and most of those in western European countries will be over 50—and older people turn out to vote in much greater numbers than younger ones. Academic studies have found no evidence so far that older voters have used their power at the ballot box to push for policies that specifically benefit them, though if in future there are many more of them they might start doing so.
[K] Nor is there any sign of the intergenerational warfare predicted in the 1990s. After all, older people themselves mostly have families. In a recent study of parents and grown-up children in 11 European countries, Karsten Hank of Mannheim University found that 85% of them lived within 25km of each other and the majority of them were in touch at least once a week.
[L] Even so, the shift in the centre of gravity to older age groups is bound to have a profound effect on societies, not just economically and politically but in all sorts of other ways too. Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of America’s CSIS, in a thoughtful book called The Graying of the Great Powers, argue that, among other things, the ageing of the developed countries will have a number of serious security implications.
[M] For example, the shortage of young adults is likely to make countries more reluctant to commit the few they have to military service. In the decades to 2050,America will find itself playing an ever-increasing role in the developed world’s defence effort. Because America’s population will still be growing when that of most other developed countries is shrinking, America will be the only developed country that still matters geopolitically (地缘政治上).
Ask me in 2020
[N] There is little that can be done to stop population ageing, so the world will have to live with it. But some of the consequences can be alleviate. Many experts now believe that given the right policies, the effects, though grave, need not be catastrophic. Most countries have recognised the need to do something and are beginning to act.
[O] But even then there is no guarantee that their efforts will work. What is happening now is historically unprecedented. Ronald Lee, director of the Centre on the Economics and Demography of Ageing at the University of California, Berkeley, puts it briefly and clearly: “We don’t really know what population ageing will be like, because nobody has done it yet.”
A series of books, mostly authored by Americans, warned of conflicts between the older and younger generations.
选项
答案
B
解析
根据题目中的books和by Americans将本题出处定位于[B]段首句。本句指出,接下来的十年里,一系列主要由美国人撰写的书籍敲响了警钟。其中的the alarm即指下文提到的“there would be intergenerational warfare”,即敲响了两代人之间将存在许多冲突的警钟。题干正是对这一信息的同义转述。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/y597777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
A、Itmaycauseunintendedbadresultstohumanbeings.B、Itisdevelopedwellenoughtoclonehumanbeings.C、Itwillbringmore
A、Moreandmorepeopleacceptclonedmilkandmeat.B、FDAapprovedthatclonedfoodissafeforhumanbeings.C、Americanfarmers
Peopleinsunny,outdoorsystates—Louisiana,Hawaii,Florida—saytheyarethehappiestAmericans,andresearchersthinktheykno
A、Theyhavetoomanyshows.B、Theydon’thaveenoughteachers.C、Theydonothaveenoughregularschools.D、Theyhavetoworkse
A、TheislandsareverydifferentfromtheNorth.B、TheislandsareagreatdistancefromtheNorth.C、Theislandsaresimilarto
A、Earlyminers.B、Spanishexplorers.C、Africannaturalists.D、Earlyindustrialists.B
WieldingapoletopilotapuntisaskillthatisrareoutsidethegorgeouswaterwaysofOxfordandCambridgeandunknowninth
Withtherecentrapidadvancesininformationtechnologies,【B1】______researchersateverylevelandinevery【C2】______havedeve
Apunctualpersonisinthehabitofdoingeverythingatthepropertimeandisneverlateinkeepinganappointment.Theunpunc
Apunctualpersonisinthehabitofdoingeverythingatthepropertimeandisneverlateinkeepinganappointment.Theunpunc
随机试题
在西方国家政党制度形成和发展过程中,重要的影响因素有()
企业外部宏观环境的分析工具PEST,是指对企业所处的以下环境因素进行研究
NowitisthebesttimeforHongKongshoppinglovers,asmostshopsandmarketsarehavingtheirseasonalsales.Whitthesame
下述何项属大肠湿热
此患者可能的诊断是其治疗措施首选
电缆线路在进行直流耐压试验的同时,在高压侧测量三相()。
现有3朵红花和5朵黄花,从中任取3朵花,则所选的花中既有红花又有黄花的概率为().
某会展中心布置会场,从花卉市场购买郁金香、月季花、牡丹花三种花卉各20盆,每盆均用纸箱打包好装车运送至会展中心,再由工人搬运至布展区。问至少要搬出多少盆花卉才能保证搬出的鲜花中一定有郁金香?
材料1习近平总书记指出:实现中国梦必须走中国道路。这就是中国特色社会主义道路。这条道路来之不易,它是在改革开放30多年的伟大实践中走出来的,是在中华人民共和国成立60多年的持续探索中走出来的,是在对近代以来170多年中华民族发展历程的深刻总结中走出来的,
中国共产党领导的多党合作和政治协商制度是
最新回复
(
0
)