单选题 In this section there are four passages followed by questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer.
Every year the Department of Agriculture publishes estimates of family spending on children. This year, as in other years, many journalists duly passed the information on, often with snide asides about the "gift that keeps on taking" or the escalating price of bundles of joy.
A married middle-income two-child family can expect to spend about $235,000 on housing, medical care, food, clothing, toys and other items over the next 17 years for a child born in 2011. The costs of college are extra.
But—as an article in The Wall Street Journal recently noted—the official estimates omit consideration of the value of the time that parents devote to children, because that is considered an indirect rather than a direct expenditure.
Indirect costs are not insignificant. Time taken out of paid employment to provide family care reduces the lifetime earnings of mothers, in particular, leaving them vulnerable to poverty if they are unmarried or experience divorce. My research, based on the analysis of the Child Development Survey of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, shows that even a very cautious estimate of what it would take to hire a replacement for family care was higher than direct expenditures on children under 12 for the year 2000. In other words, the total costs were more than twice as high as the direct costs.
Child care is often a satisfying, meaningful activity, but it's not always fun. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, reports that American women find it slightly less enjoyable than doing housework and only slightly more enjoyable than paid work.
What would happen if parents and grandparents withdrew those services or were unable to provide them? If we were concerned about the welfare of their children, we would need to pay for substitutes.
The time and money that families devote to children represent costs not just for them but for society as a whole. On the other hand, this investment in human capital yields benefits in terms of future earnings and future taxes paid.
Failure to think clearly about these issues reflects a larger confusion about children's place in our economic system. In an earlier era, they were considered one of our most important crops—a contribution to total output. I sometimes illustrate presentations on this topic with the artist Ann Geddes's memorable image of babies growing in a cabbage patch.
The historian Laura Lovett describes state fairs in the 1930s where parents could enter their children to be judged, along with their pumpkin pies and heifer yearlings. Perhaps this helps explain how the Department of Agriculture became involved in estimating their costs.
In an economy based on family farms, children began work at an early age under parental supervision, and their productive activities contributed to family income. They were also more likely to support their parents in old age, in return for inheriting the farm.
Today, people are more likely to think of children as pets, a discretionary source of affection and entertainment, perhaps even a luxury good. (People also tend to think of pets as children.) My favorite illustration of this is a New Yorker cover depicting a couple passing a shop window, the woman looking longingly at babies gamboling like puppies behind the glass.
Many environmentalists, worried about the impact of global population growth, see children as a threat rather than a resource. A recent book review in The New Yorker asks, "Is procreation immoral?" But one doesn't have to favor population growth to recognize the value of parental commitments. Fertility rates in the United States, as in many developed countries, have fallen below replacement levels.
Rather than trying to draw analogies with either livestock or pets, we should conceptualize children as key elements of an economic system that reaches beyond the boundaries of both the market and the state, part of an intergenerational private/public partnership vital to our society.
Most of us, whether parents or not, will rely on the next generation to care for us in old age and to pay taxes to repay our public debt.
Most of us, whether parents or not, will leave bequests for the next generation, whether in the form of money, knowledge, technical innovation, physical infrastructure or an increasingly fragile and disrupted natural environment.
Parents and potential parents could benefit from more complete estimates of the costs they will incur. They could benefit even more from greater public recognition of their contributions to society.

单选题 What is the main idea of the passage?

A. How much a family needs to raise a child.
B. The indirect costs of raising a child.
C. Child care and its costs for the family and the society.
D. Child care has been an investment for parents.

单选题 Which of the following is NOT mentioned as costs in raising a child?

A. College education.
B. Time devoted by parents.
C. Child care services.
D. Taxes and public debt.

单选题 According to Daniel Kahneman, American women find childcare ______.

A. slightly less enjoyable than doing housework
B. slightly more enjoyable than doing housework
C. more meaningful than paid work
D. satisfying, meaningful and full of fun

单选题 The indirect costs of child care is significant because time taken out of paid employ-ment to provide child care ______.

A. reduces the lifetime earnings of mothers
B. increases the future earnings of mothers
C. increases the future taxes paid
D. contributes to social development

单选题 Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A. An average of $235,000 will be spent over the next 17 years on a child born in 2011.
B. Today, people are more likely to think of children as pets.
C. Parents benefit from more complete estimates of the costs to raise a child.
D. Children are key elements of an economic system.