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  3. Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago? In their thirst for evidence on this i

Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago? In their thirst for evidence on this i

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问题    Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago?
   In their thirst for evidence on this issue, commentators seized on the recent report by the Census Bureau, which found that average household income rose by 5.2% in 2015. Unfortunately, that conclusion puts too much weight on a useful, but flawed and incomplete, statistic. Among the more significant problems with the Census’ s measure are that: 1) it excludes taxes, transfers, and compensation like employer-provided health insurance; and 2) it is based on surveys rather than data. Even if precisely measured, income data exclude important determinants of economic well-being, such as the hours of work needed to earn that income.
   While thinking about the question, we came across a recently published article by Charles Jones and Peter Klenow, which proposes an interesting new measure of economic welfare. While by no means perfect, it is considerably more comprehensive than average income, taking into account not only growth in consumption per person but also changes in working time, life expectancy, and inequality. Moreover, it can be used to assess economic performance both across countries and over time.
   The Jones-Klenow method can be illustrated by a cross-country example. Suppose we want to compare the economic welfare of citizens of the U. S. and France in 2005.
   In 2005, as the authors observe, real consumption per person in France was only 60% as high as the U. S. , making it appear that Americans were economically much better off than the French on average. However, that comparison omits other relevant factors: leisure time, life expectancy, and economic inequality. The French take longer vacations and retire earlier, so typically work fewer hours; they enjoy a higher life expectancy, presumably reflecting advantages with respect to health care, diet, lifestyle, and the like; and income and consumption are somewhat more equally distributed there than in the U. S. Because of these differences, comparing France’ s consumption with the U. S. ’ s overstates the gap in economic welfare.
   Similar calculations can be used to compare the U. S. and other countries. For example, this calculation puts economic welfare in the United Kingdom at 97% of U. S. levels, but estimates Mexican well-being at 22%.
   The Jones-Klenow measure can also assess an economy’ s performance over time. According to this measure, as of the early-to-mid-2000s, the U. S. had the highest economic welfare of any large country. Since 2007, economic welfare in the U. S. has continued to improve. However, the pace of improvement has slowed markedly.
   Methodologically, the lesson from the Jones-Klenow research is that economic welfare is multidimensional. Their approach is flexible enough that in principle other important quality-of-life changes could be incorporated—for example, decreases in total emissions of pollutants and declines in crime rates.
What can we infer from the passage about American people’ s economic well-being?
选项 A、It is much better than that of their European counterparts.
B、It has been on the decline ever since the turn of the century.
C、It has not improved as much as reported by the Census Bureau.
D、It has not been accurately assessed and reported since mid-2000s.
答案C
解析 推理题。原文第二段指出，美国人口普查局报告中的美国家庭平均收入增长的统计数据是有缺陷的、不完整的，人口普查的衡量标准没有包含税收等指标，其收入数据也不包括经济福利的重要决定因素，所以可以推断，美国人口经济福利增长幅度没有人口普查局报告的那么多，故答案为C。A项与原文不符，根据文章第五段的内容，我们可以得知，尽管调查数据显示法国的人均实际消费只有美国的60％，但作者认为该比较夸大了两国经济福利的差距，言外之意即法国与美国的经济差距并没有数据显示的那么大；第六段提到，根据琼斯．克莱诺衡量方法，英国的经济福利是美国经济福利的97％，由此可知英国的人民经济福利与美国相差无几，所以A项是错误的，故排除。B项与原文不符，美国的经济状况一直在提升，并不是在走下坡路，故排除。D项原文未提及，故排除。
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