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  3. The American economy, whether in government or private industry, has found retirement a convenient practice for managing the lab

The American economy, whether in government or private industry, has found retirement a convenient practice for managing the lab

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问题     The American economy, whether in government or private industry, has found retirement a convenient practice for managing the labor force. On the positive side, widespread retirement has meant an expansion of leisure and opportunities for self-fulfillment in later life. On the negative side, the practice of retirement entails large costs, both in funding required for pension systems and in the loss of the accumulated skills and talents of older people.
    Critics of retirement as it exists today have pointed to the rigidity of retirement practices: for example, the fact that retirement is typically an all-or-nothing proposition. Would it not be better to have some form of flexible or phased retirement, in which employees gradually reduce their work hours or take longer vacations? Such an approach might enable older workers to adjust better to retirement, while permitting employers to make gradual changes instead of coping with the abrupt departure of an employee. Retirement could be radically redefined in the future.
    Earlier criticism of mandatory retirement at a fixed age led to legal abolition of the practice, for the most part, in 1986. The same kind of criticism has been leveled at the practice of age discrimination in employment. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act forbids older workers from being limited or treated in any way that would harm their employment possibilities. Still, most observers admit that age discrimination in the workplace remains widespread. The negative stereotypes of older workers have caused employers to be reluctant to hire or train older people. Sometimes such discrimination against older workers is based on mistaken ideas, such as the false belief that older workers are less productive. In fact, empirical studies have not shown older workers to be less dependable in their job performance, nor are their absenteeism rate higher.
    Interest in the potential productivity of older workers has stimulated the growth of industrial gerontology, a field concerned with recruitment, performance appraisal, retraining, and redesign of jobs to permit older workers to be more productive. Managing an older workforce will clearly be a challenge for the future. There is also much support for the idea of work life extension; that is adaptations of retirement roles or employment practices to enable older people to become more productive. In favor of this idea is the fact that three-quarters of employed people over 65 are in white-collar occupations in service industries, which are less physically demanding than agriculture or manufacturing jobs. As a result, it is sometimes argued, older people can remain in productive jobs now longer than in the past. In addition, some analysts point to declining numbers of young people entering the workforce, thus anticipating a labor shortage later in the 1990s. That development, if it occurred, might stimulate a need for older workers and a reversal of the trend toward early retirement.
Which of the following might lead to work life extension?
选项 A、Retraining of old people in modern skills.
B、The trend toward early retirement.
C、The expansion of agriculture and manufacturing industry.
D、The declining younger labor force.
答案D
解析 本题的四个选项中，只有D项为正确答案。这可从文中最后一段内容推知，该段主要阐述的是延长劳动时间的问题，在结尾处又说如果劳动力短缺的问题变为现实，则可能会刺激对老年劳动者的需求。
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