阅读理解
Why has crime in the U.S. declined so dramatically since the 1990s?
Economists and sociologists have offered a bounty of reasons, including more police, more security technology, more economic growth, more immigration, more imprisonment, and so on.
The "real" answer is almost certainly a combination of these factors, rather than one of them to the exclusion of the rest. But a new paper adds a surprising variable to the mix. What if the decline of crime in America started with the decline of cash?
Cash is critical to the health of an underground economy, because it's anonymous, nearly untraceable, and easily stolen. This makes it the lifeblood of the black market.
But Americans are rapidly abandoning cash thanks to credit cards, debit cards, and mobile payments. Half a century ago, cash was used in 80 percent of U.S. payments. Now that figure is about 50 percent, according to researchers.
In the 1980s, the federal government switched from paper money to electronic benefit transfers. They didn't switch all at once. They switched one county at a time within states. This created a kind of randomly controlled environment for the researchers, who studied Missouri's counties to establish whether the areas that switched from welfare cash to electronic transfers saw a concurrent decline in crime.
The results were striking: The shift away from cash was associated with "a significant decrease in the overall crime rate and the specific offenses of burglary and assault in Missouri and a decline in arrests." In other words, the counties saw a decline in specific crimes when they switched away from cash welfare.
Perhaps most interestingly, they found that the switch to electronic transfers reduced robbery but not rape, suggesting that the move away from cash only had an impact on crime related to getting and spending cash.
The move toward cashlessness in the U.S. continues quickly. Google now lets you attach money to emails to send to friends, which means that for some shoppers, pulling out your credit card could become as rare as finding exact change in your coin purse. It might seem absurd to imagine Visa, Square, and Google Wallet as crime-fighting technologies. But with a better understanding of how cash's availability affects crime, perhaps the government should consider killing more than just the penny.
Economists and sociologists have offered a bounty of reasons, including more police, more security technology, more economic growth, more immigration, more imprisonment, and so on.
The "real" answer is almost certainly a combination of these factors, rather than one of them to the exclusion of the rest. But a new paper adds a surprising variable to the mix. What if the decline of crime in America started with the decline of cash?
Cash is critical to the health of an underground economy, because it's anonymous, nearly untraceable, and easily stolen. This makes it the lifeblood of the black market.
But Americans are rapidly abandoning cash thanks to credit cards, debit cards, and mobile payments. Half a century ago, cash was used in 80 percent of U.S. payments. Now that figure is about 50 percent, according to researchers.
In the 1980s, the federal government switched from paper money to electronic benefit transfers. They didn't switch all at once. They switched one county at a time within states. This created a kind of randomly controlled environment for the researchers, who studied Missouri's counties to establish whether the areas that switched from welfare cash to electronic transfers saw a concurrent decline in crime.
The results were striking: The shift away from cash was associated with "a significant decrease in the overall crime rate and the specific offenses of burglary and assault in Missouri and a decline in arrests." In other words, the counties saw a decline in specific crimes when they switched away from cash welfare.
Perhaps most interestingly, they found that the switch to electronic transfers reduced robbery but not rape, suggesting that the move away from cash only had an impact on crime related to getting and spending cash.
The move toward cashlessness in the U.S. continues quickly. Google now lets you attach money to emails to send to friends, which means that for some shoppers, pulling out your credit card could become as rare as finding exact change in your coin purse. It might seem absurd to imagine Visa, Square, and Google Wallet as crime-fighting technologies. But with a better understanding of how cash's availability affects crime, perhaps the government should consider killing more than just the penny.
单选题
11.Americans are rapidly abandoning cash because_____.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】细节题。根据题干关键词定位到五段，第五段第一句提到，由于信用卡、借记卡和手机支付的发展，美国人很快不再使用现金。因此美国人不再使用现金的原因是多种形式的卡片及交易方式的出现。故此题答案为D项。
单选题
12.The reason why the reseachers favor the government's switch from one county to anther is that_____.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】细节题。根据题干关键词定位到第六段。本段提到This created a kind of…for the researchers…，即政府在州内一次更新一个县的系统，这项举措为研究人员提供了一个随机的可控制环境，以方便进行减少现金使用是否会使犯罪率下降的研究，B为randomly controled environment的同义转述，故为本题答案。
单选题
13.The shift away from cash in Missouri's counties resulted in______.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】细节题。根据题干关键词定位到第七、八段。根据第七段the counties saw a decline in specific crimes和第八段the move away from cash only had an impact on crime related to getting and spending cash可以推断出C项“减少了与使用现金有关的犯罪”为正确答案。
单选题
14.It can be learned from the last paragraph that______.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】推断题。根据题干关键词定位到最后一段。根据文中But…affects crime，perhaps the government should consider killing more than just the penny．(但是如果能理解现金对于犯罪的影响，也许政府会考虑停用纸币而非只是硬币。)可知，作者希望政府能够废除纸币，故A项“政府被建议提倡无现金支付”符合题意，为正确答案。
单选题
15.Which of the following would be the most appropriate title for this text?
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】主旨题。本文前两段列举了20世纪90年代以来美国的犯罪情况急剧减少的因素。第三段承上启下，提出犯罪率下降是否和减少现金使用有关呢?第四段指出使用现金为什么容易导致犯罪。第五段至第八段通过研究说明减少现金使用有助于减少和现金支付有关的犯罪。第九段指出美国无现金进程加快，指出减少现金使用确实可以在一定程度上减少犯罪。整篇文章围绕两个关键词cash和crime展开论述。因此只有B项“减少现金使用如何使美国变得更安全”为正确答案。