The passages below discuss the retirement age. Passage 1: In the United States,the financial crisis has left the country with 11 million fewer jobs than Americans need now.No matter how tough the policy ,we are not going to find 11 million new jobs soon.So common sense suggests we should make some decisions about who should come first:older people,who have already worked three or four decades at hard jobs? Or younger people,many just out of school,with fresh skills and ambitions? The answer is obvious.Older people who would like to retire and would do so if they could afford it should get some help.The right step is to reduce,not increase,the retirement age.As a rough cut,why not make it a law to set a three--year window during which the age for receiving full Social Security benefits would drop to 62----providing a voluntary ,one--time,grab-it-now bonus for leaving work? Let them go home! With a secure pension and medical care,they will be happier.Young people who need work will be happier.And there will also be more jobs.With pension security, older people will consume services until the end of their lives.They will become.each and every one,an employer. Passage 2: Too many people see longer working lives as a worry rather than an opportunity--and not just because they are going to be chained to their desks.Some worry that there will not be enough jobs to go around.This misunderstanding,known to economists as the"lump of labour fallacy ",was once used to argue that women should stay at home and leave all the jobs for breadwinning males.Now lump-of-labourites say that keeping the old at work would deprive the young of employment.The idea that society can become better-off by paying more of its citizens to be idle is clearly ridiculous.On that reasoning,if the retirement age came down to 25 we would all be as rich as Bill Gates. Lump-of-laborites believe that _ . A) young citizens should be better paid B) the old should leave jobs for the young C) males should earn bread for the family D) earlier retirement will lead to a poorer society
B
(Question)
Queen Elizabeth II is not only the queen of the United Kingdom, but she is also the queen of other 16 countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Jamaica. Her face is seen on stamps and coins all around the world. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born in London on April 21st1926. Her parents were George, the Duke of York, and Elizabeth, the daughter of the Earl and Count-ness of Strathmore. As a child, Princess Elizabeth lived with her parents and younger sister in London and Windsor. Every summer, she traveled to Scotland to visit her mother's parents. She was interested in all sorts of sports, but her favorites were horse riding and swimming. She was also fond of acting, art and music. As princess Elizabeth grew older, she started to play a part in British public life. When she was 14, she broadcast a radio message to all the children of Britain and the Common-wealth . Two years later, she carried out her first public engagement, and started to go on official tours shortly after that. After a tour to South Africa in 1946, she married Philip Mountbatten. The couple had four children: Prince Charles, born in 1948, Princess Anne, born in 1950, Prince Andrew, born in 1960 and Prince Edward, born in 1964. After her father died, Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II in a ceremony held in London in 1953. As a queen, she has many duties, and leads a very busy life. She travels throughout the world, meeting the leaders of other countries, and attends a large number of official functions. She also holds a meeting every week with the British Prime Minister. Every year, on Christmas Day, she broadcast a message to the people of British and the Commonwealth, talking about her hopes for the future. Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne for more than 40 years and has become one of the most famous women in the world. Lots of people in British believe that she tries hard to understand her people and be a good queen. More than her title, this quality has earned her... Today, Queen Elizabeth _ A) does not lead a very busy life B) holds a meeting every fortnight with the British Prime Minister C) rarely leaves the UK D) is always busy carrying out her royal duties.
(Answer)
D
Ques: Former Irish President Mary Robinson was just making a polite conversation with an Ethiopian teenager about her wedding day. The 16yearold had already been married for a year. "She looked at me with the saddest eyes and said, 'I had to drop out of school'," Robinson said in a telephone interview. "That conveyed to me the reality," said Robinson, the first woman to serve as Ireland's president and former U.N. high commissioner for human fights. "Her life, as far as she is concerned, had more or less ended." Robinson said keeping girls in school was one of the most important things policymakers could do to address the coming challenges of an ever-increasing population, predicted by the United Nations to reach 7 billion soon. "European countries are concerned about aging populations as is Japan, but this is much less of an issue than the huge number of people which we are going to see over the next 40 years when the population goes from 7 billion to 9 billion," she said. "Almost all of that increase will be in poor developing countries, so that we have a very big challenge." Family planning experts worry in particular about the future population explosion in subSaharan Africa. In May, the United Nations projected the world population would reach 9.3billion in 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100. Much of that growth will come from Africa, where the population is growing at 2.3 percent a year--more than double Asia's 1 percent growth rate. If that rate stays consistent, which is not certain, Africa's population will reach 3.6 billion by 2100 from the present 1 billion. Joel Cohen, a professor of population studies at Rockefeller University and Columbia University in New York, said universal secondary education offered a way to reduce population in high birthrate regions. In addition to providing information about birth control, a secondary education teaches women to reduce their own fertility , improve the health of their children and allows them to move from a mindset of having many children, in the hopes that some... What can we learn from the passage? A) Robinson is happy after talking to the Ethiopian girl. B) Robinson is a successful expert in population studies. C) Robinson is worried about population growth. D) Robinson encourages female education.
Ans:
C