单选题 Prolonging human life has increased the size of the human population. Many people alive today would have died of childhood diseases if they had been born a hundred years ago. Because more people live longer, there are more people around at any given time. In fact, it is a decrease in death rates, not an increase in birth rates, that has led to the population explosion.
Prolonging human life has also increased the dependency load. In all societies, people who are disabled or too young or too old to work are dependent on the rest of society to provide for them. In hunting and gathering cultures, old people who could not keep up might be left behind to die. In times of famine, infants might be allowed to die because they could not survive if their parents starved, whereas if the parents survived they could have another child. In most contemporary (当代的) societies, people feel a moral obligation to keep people alive whether they can work or not. We have a great many people today who live past the age at which they want to work or are able to work; we also have rules which require people to retire at a certain age. Unless these people were able to save money for their retirement, somebody else must support them. In the United States many retired people live on social security checks which are so little that they must live in near poverty. Older people have more illness than young or middle-aged people; unless they have wealth or private or government insurance, they must often go on welfare if they have a serious illness.
When older people become senile or too weak to care for themselves, they create grave problems for their families. In the past and in some traditional cultures, they would be cared for at home until they died. Today, with most members of a household working or in school, there is often no one at home who can care for a sick or weak person. To meet this need, a great many nursing homes and convalescent (康复的) hospitals have been built. These are often profit-making organizations, although some are sponsored (赞助) by religious and other nonprofit groups. While a few of these institutions are good, most of them are simply dumping grounds for the dying in which care is given by poorly paid, overworked, and under-skilled personnel.

单选题 What was the cause to the population growth according to the passage?
A. increase of birth rate
B. advance in medical care
C. well-administered social welfare
D. the decrease of death rate

单选题 It can be learned from the passage that in some traditional societies _____.
A. infants may be left to die when there isn't enough food to go around
B. old and sick people are cared for at home until they died
C. people are required to retire at a certain age
D. people who are too weak or ill have to take care of themselves

单选题 What does the word "senile' in the first line of the last paragraph mean?
A. advanced in age B. sick
C. disabled D. capricious

单选题 What is the author's attitude toward the nursing homes and convalescent hospitals mentioned in the paragraph?
A. suspicious B. optimistic C. neutral D. critical