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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】________.
【C18】
选项 A、smaller
B、poorer
C、younger
D、smarter
答案A
解析 句中m other words表明，该句是换个表达方式来概括上文的观点。前文一直谈论的话题是出生率下降，家庭中孩子的数量有所减少，或者根本没有孩子。这涉及的显然是家庭在规模大小方面的特征。A项smaller“更小的”符合语义要求。上下文没有相关语义依据来判断家庭是B项poorer(更穷的)、C项younger(更年轻的)或者D项smarter(更明智的)，因此需排除此三项。
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