单选题 Imagine that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called The Logic of Life. With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging. Somehow or other, she "steals" a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues.
Real life is more complicated, of course, but this simple model illustrates an important truth. In the marriage market, numbers matter. And among African-Americans, the difference is much worse than in Mr. Harford's imaginary example. Between the ages of 20 and 29, one black man in nine is behind bars. For black women of the same age, the figure is about one in 150. For obvious reasons, convicts are excluded from the dating pool.
Removing so many men from the marriage market has profound consequences. As imprisonment rates exploded between 1970 and 2007, the proportion of U. S.-born black women aged 30-44 who were married plunged from 62% to 33%. Why this happened is complex and furiously debated. The era of mass imprisonment began as traditional mores were already crumbling, following the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the invention of the contraceptive pill. ^① It also coincided with greater opportunities for women in the workplace. These factors must surely have had something to do with the decline of marriage.
But jail is a big part of the problem, argue Kerwin Kofi Charles, now at the University of Chicago. They divided America up into geographical and racial " marriage markets", to take account of the fact that most people marry someone of the same race who lives relatively close to them.^②, Then, after crunching the census numbers, they found that a one percentage point increase in the male imprisonment rate was associated with a 2.4-point reduction in the proportion of women who ever marry.^③ Could it be, however, that mass imprisonment is a symptom of increasing social malfunction, and that it was this social malfunction that caused marriage to wither?^④ Probably not. For similar crimes, America imposes much harsher penalties than other rich countries. Mr. Charles and Mr. Luoh controlled for crime rates, as a substitution for social malfunction, and found that it made no difference to their results. They concluded that "higher male imprisonment has lowered the likelihood that women marry...and caused a shift in the gains from marriage away from women and towards men. /

单选题 The word "ensues" in Paragraph 1 probably means______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】词义题。由题干定位至首段。最后几句解释了面对有成为“剩女”的可能性，以及女士们因此所采取的行动。倒数第三句提到结果“Somehow or other, she "steals" a man from one of her fellow women．”，之后“That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else.”，这说明当男少女多时，就会不断出现一个女子从另一个女子身边抢男人的事情。这是一种连锁反应，[B]符合文意，故为答案。[A]项是指连锁反应会导致什么样的结果，但“A chain reaction ensues”是对上文的解释，与该处语义关系矛盾，排除；文中没有提到抢男人的连锁反应受到欢迎，也没有提到会暂时中止，排除[C]和[D]。

单选题 We can infer from the passage that______.

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】推断题。第二段第四句中，behind bars意为“在狱中服刑”，黑人男性服刑比例是九分之一，而女性是一百五十分之一，显然两者的犯罪率不同，故[D]为答案。文章只提到在适婚年龄段，黑人男女各自犯罪率的比例，不涉及美国整体犯罪数量的问题，[A]无依据；文章没有提到犯罪率是否逐步下降的问题，在第三段第二句还提到“As imprisonment rates exploded between 1970 and 2007”，[B]与文章矛盾，排除；文章只笼统地提到服刑，并没有提到serious crimes(重罪)，[C]无依据，排除。

单选题 Which of the following does NOT result in the decline of marriage rate of black women?

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】细节题。由题干中的decline of marriage定位至第三段。第四句解释了“从1970年到2007年，黑人入狱比例猛增；同时，在出生于美国的30到44岁的黑人女性中，结婚率从62%下降到33%”的原因，其中“the invention of the contraceptive pill”是指避孕药的发明，[C]是就该处的曲解，故为答案。[A]是对“It also coincided with greater opportunities for women in the workplace．”的概括；[B]是对“the sexual revolution of the1960s”的阐释；[D]是对“traditional mores were already crumbling”的同义转述，这三项均与原文相符。

单选题 In terms of marriage, most people tend to ______.

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】推断题。由题干中的marriage和most people定位至第四段第二句“most people marry someone of the same race who lives relatively close to them”，由此推断，大多数人会倾向于选择背景和自己比较相似的人结婚，故[D]为答案。文章没有提到多数人是闪婚还是认真考虑之后才结婚的问题，[A]属于过度推断，故排除；[B]与该段第二句的“who lives relatively close to them”矛盾，也排除；文章也未提到社会地位和经济地位是否匹配的问题，排除[C]。

单选题 Mr. Charles and Mr. Luoh's research shows that as to marriage,______.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】推断题。由题干中的Mr. Charles and Mr. Luoh定位至末段，末句是两人的研究结论，而这些都是对该段首句进行解释说明的支持性细节，目的就是表明影响女士婚姻的主要因素是男性入狱问题，故[C]为答案。末句提到的是“女性从婚姻中的所获减少、而男性所获增加”，没有提到生活艰辛，排除[A]；第三句提出了一个问题“Could it be, however, that mass imprisonment is a symptom of increasing social malfunction, and that it was this social malfunction that caused marriage to wither?”，第五句解释了两人的研究方法“查尔斯与骆明庆将社会失衡指标替换为犯罪率，发现对结果没有影响”，[B]和[D]是对该句的曲解，排除。