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  3. The government has launched its consultation on better measures of child poverty, but it really has to be asked, better for whom

The government has launched its consultation on better measures of child poverty, but it really has to be asked, better for whom

admin2015-09-26  61
问题     The government has launched its consultation on better measures of child poverty, but it really has to be asked, better for whom? This is a government that looks set to preside over a truly dramatic increase in child poverty. The Institute for Fiscal Studies projects that after a decade of steady reductions in child poverty rates, 300,000 more children will be living in poverty in the U. K. by 2015. Big cuts to tax credits, a three-year freeze in child benefit, uprating out-of-work benefits using CPI rather than the more generous RPI—all will make vulnerable families poor over the course of this parliament.
    So what does the government do about it? Rather than review its policies and ask how it can seek to fulfill its legal commitments under the Child Poverty Act 2010, it launches a consultation on the way that child poverty is measured.
    Poverty is a complex phenomenon and no single indicator can fully capture the condition. The CPA 2010 recognizes this, urging governments to make progress against four specific measures; relative poverty, absolute poverty, material deprivation and persistent poverty. Alongside this, we also track numerous other indicators of child well-being in the U. K. such as educational achievement, health outcomes and subjective experience.
    Both lain Duncan Smith and David Laws sought to convince the audience at the launch of the consultation that the government was not in retreat from the income measures contained in the CPA 2010. But in truth, the consultation document is peppered with digs at the relative measure, suggesting that changes to this indicator do not tell us anything meaningful about "real" poverty.
    The consultation also seeks to dilute the relevance of income by developing a "multidimensional indicator" of child poverty. This indicator will blend together measures of worklessness, unmanageable debt and family stability among others to produce a single headline number that can be tracked over time.
    At best, the government is combining poverty with its many consequences. At worst, it is simply changing the yardstick against which they will be measured.
    Consider, for example, the proposal that parental worklessness be a key defining feature of the new child poverty measure. Using current definitions, 60% of children living in poverty today have at least one parent in work. Any measure that insists poverty is about worklessness will simply airbrush these 1.4 million children out of the picture altogether.
    Equally worryingly, the consultation insists that any new poverty measure must resonate with the public. The latest British Social Attitudes survey shows just how widespread negative views of vulnerable groups in society are, but also makes clear that much of this shift in public opinion has been caused by current and previous government policies.
    So, should we expect better measures of child poverty as a result of the consultation? Not better for the children growing up in low-income families for sure. And given the broader costs to society of child poverty, not better for anyone else—except, perhaps, a government that we suspect may be trying to avoid being held to account.
It can be inferred from the last paragraph that______.
选项 A、we can get better measures of child poverty from this consultation
B、changing the child poverty measures can’t help poor children
C、the government can’t benefit from better measures of child poverty
D、the government avoids taking the responsibility
答案B
解析 推理题。由最后一段第二句可知，贫困儿童更好的衡量标准对于在低收人家庭中长大的儿童没有任何好处，由此可知，改变贫困儿童衡量标准并不会对贫穷儿童有所帮助，所以[B]为正确答案。最后一段第一句是一个问句，并未肯定此次磋商能讨论出贫困儿童更好的衡量标准，所以排除[A]；本段最后一句提到除了政府以外，其他任何人都得不到好处，因此[C]“政府不能从贫困儿童更好的衡量标准中获益”与文意相反，故排除；[D]“政府逃避责任”是文章最后一句的字面意思，所以排除。
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