考研英语经济学人文章阅读训练三十六
2019经济学人考研英文文章阅读一三六
Japanese commuters try new ways to deter gropers日本通勤族尝试用新方法防止性骚扰Victims are fighting back with apps,badges and invisible ink受害者正在用应用程序、徽章和隐形墨水来反击Throughout her20s,Yayoi Matsunaga was groped,almost daily,on packed rush-hour trains going to and from work.Three decades later,she discovered that her friend’s daughter was being molested on her commute to high school.在松永弥生20多岁的时候，她几乎每天都会在上下班高峰拥挤的列车上被人骚扰。
30年过去了，她发现她朋友的女儿仍会在上高中的通勤路上被人骚扰。
The teenager,after fruitless talks with the police and railway companies, decided to hang a sign from her bag that read:“Groping is a crime.I will not cry myself to sleep.”The groping stopped immediately.在与警方和铁路部门交涉无果后，这名女孩决定在她的书包上挂一个牌子，上面写着：“性骚扰就是犯罪，我不会暗自哭泣的。
”效果立竿见影。
Inspired,Ms Matsunaga launched a crowdfunding campaign in2015to create badges with the same message.They proved as effective as the sign: nearly95%of users stopped experiencing groping on public transport, according to a survey.受此启发，松永弥生在2015年发起了一项众筹活动，制作带有相同信息的徽章。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文经济学人
Ask people to name someone they find charming and the answers are often predictable. There’s James Bond, the fictional spy with a penchant for shaken martinis. Maybe they’ll mention Oprah Winfrey, Bill Clinton or a historical figure, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi. Now ask the same people to describe, in just a few seconds, what makes these charmers so likable.要是你让人说出一个他心目中有魅力的人的名字，答案通常都可以预测。
有人会说詹姆斯·邦德，那个偏爱摇酒法调制的马提尼的虚构的间谍。
也许会有人提到欧普拉·温弗里，比尔·克林顿，或是某个历史人物，比如小马丁·路德·金牧师，或是圣雄·甘地。
那么现在再让同一个人来用区区几秒钟描述，到底是什么特质让这些魅力十足的人物如此受人爱戴呢？It’s here, in defining what exactly charisma is, that most hit a wall. Instinctually, we know that we’re drawn to certain people more than others. Quantifying why we like them is an entirely different exercise.到此为止，在魅力到底是什么的确切定义过程中，通常就是到这里走进了死胡同。
Climate science 《经济学人》——考研阅读
Climate scienceA sensitive matterThe climate may be heating up less in response to greenhouse-gas emissions than was once thought. But that does not mean the problem is going awayOVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature h as been flat for a decade.”Related topics∙Environmental problems and protection∙Science∙Climatology∙Climate change∙Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ChangeTemperatures fluctuate over short periods, but this lack of new warming is a surprise. Ed Hawkins, of the University of Reading, in Britain, points out that surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range of projections derived from 20 climate models (see chart 1). If they remain flat, they will fall outside the models’ range within a few years.The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now. It does not mean global warming is a delusion. Flat though they are, temperatures in the first decade of the 21st century remain almost 1°C above their level in the first decade of the 20th. But the puzzle does need explaining.The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason—there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10. Or it might be that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period. Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before. This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy.The insensitive planetThe term scientists use to describe the way the climate reacts to changes incarbon-dioxide levels is “climate sensitivity”. This is usually defined as how much hotter the Earth will get for each doubling of CO₂concentrations. So-called equilibrium sensitivity, the commonest measure, refers to the temperature rise after allowing all feedback mechanisms to work (but without accounting for changes in vegetation and ice sheets).Carbon dioxide itself absorbs infra-red at a consistent rate. For each doubling of CO₂levels you get roughly 1°C of warming. A rise in concentrations from preindustrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to 560ppm would thus warm the Earth by 1°C. If that were all there was to worry about, there would, as it were, be nothing to worry about. A 1°C rise could be shrugged off. But things are not that simple, for two reasons. One is that rising CO₂levels directly influence phenomena such as the amount of water vapour (also a greenhouse gas) and clouds that amplify or diminish the temperature rise. This affects equilibrium sensitivity directly, meaning doubling carbon concentrations would produce more than a 1°C rise in temperature. The second is that other things, such as adding sootand other aerosols to the atmosphere, add to or subtract from the effect of CO₂. All serious climate scientists agree on these two lines of reasoning. But they disagree on the size of the change that is predicted.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which embodies the mainstream of climate science, reckons the answer is about 3°C, plus or minus a degree or so. In its most recent assessment (in 2007), i t wrote that “the equilibrium climate sensitivity…is likely to be in the range 2°C to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded.” The IPCC’s next assessment is due in Sep tember. A draft version was recently leaked. It gave the same range of likely outcomes and added an upper limit of sensitivity of 6°C to 7°C.A rise of around 3°C could be extremely damaging. The IPCC’s earlier assessment said such a rise could mean that more areas would be affected by drought; that up to 30% of species could be at greater risk of extinction; that most corals would face significant biodiversity losses; and that there would be likely increases of intense tropical cyclones and much higher sea levels.New Model ArmyOther recent studies, though, paint a different picture. An unpublished report by the Research Council of Norway, a government-funded body, which was compiled by a team led by Terje Berntsen of the University of Oslo, uses a differe nt method from the IPCC’s. It concludes there is a 90% probability that doubling CO₂emissions will increase temperatures by only 1.2-2.9°C, with the most likely figure being 1.9°C. The top of the study’s range is well below the IPCC’s upper estimates of likely sensitivity.This study has not been peer-reviewed; it may be unreliable. But its projections are not unique. Work by Julia Hargreaves of the Research Institute for Global Change in Yokohama, which was published in 2012, suggests a 90% chance of the actual change being in the range of 0.5-4.0°C, with a mean of 2.3°C. This is based on the way the climate behaved about 20,000 years ago, at the peak of the last ice age, a period when carbon-dioxide concentrations leapt. Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist, got an even lower range in a study accepted for publication: 1.0-3.0°C, with a mean of 1.6°C. His calculations reanalysed work cited by the IPCC and took account of more recent temperature data. In all these calculations, the chances of climate sensitivity above 4.5°C become vanishingly small.If such estimates were right, they would require revisions to the science of climate change and, possibly, to public policies. If, as conventional wisdom has it, global temperatures could rise by 3°C or more in response to a doubling of emissions, then the correct response would be the one to which most of the world pays lip service: rein in the warming and the greenhouse gases causing it. This is called “mitigation”, in the jargon. Moreover, if there were an outside possibility of something catastrophic, such as a 6°C rise, that could justify drastic interventions. This would be similar to taking out disaster insurance. It mayseem an unnecessary expense when you are forking out for the premiums, but when you need it, you really need it. Many economists, including William Nordhaus of Yale University, have made this case.If, however, temperatures are likely to rise by only 2°C in response to a doubling of carbon emissions (and if the likelihood of a 6°C increase is trivial), the calculation might change. Perhaps the world should seek to adjust to (rather than stop) the greenhouse-gas splurge. There is no point buying earthquake insurance if you do not live in an earthquake zone. In this case more adaptation rather than more mitigation might be the right policy at the margin. But that would be good advice only if these new estimates really were more reliable than the old ones. And different results come from different models.One type of model—general-circulation models, or GCMs—use a bottom-up approach. These divide the Earth and its atmosphere into a grid which generates an enormous number of calculations in order to imitate the climate system and the multiple influences upon it. The advantage of such complex models is that they are extremely detailed. Their disadvantage is that they do not respond to new temperature readings. They simulate the way the climate works over the long run, without taking account of what current observations are. Their sensitivity is based upon how accurately they describe the processes and feedbacks in the climate system.The other type—energy-balance models—are simpler. They are top-down, treating the Earth as a single unit or as two hemispheres, and representing the whole climate with a few equations reflecting things such as changes in greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols and global temperatures. Such models do not try to describe the complexities of the climate. That is a drawback. But they have an advantage, too: unlike the GCMs, they explicitly use temperature data to estimate the sensitivity of the climate system, so they respond to actual climate observations.The IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity are bas ed partly on GCMs. Because these reflect scientists’ understanding of how the climate works, and that understanding has not changed much, the models have not changed either and do not reflect the recent hiatus in rising temperatures. In contrast, the Norwegian study was based on an energy-balance model. So were earlier influential ones by Reto Knutti of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich; by Piers Forster of the University of Leeds and Jonathan Gregory of the University of Reading; by Natalia Andronova and Michael Schlesinger, both of the University of Illinois; and by Magne Aldrin of the Norwegian Computing Centre (who is also a co-author of the new Norwegian study). All these found lower climate sensitivities. The paper by Drs Forster and Gregory found a central estimate of 1.6°C for equilibrium sensitivity, with a 95% likelihood of a 1.0-4.1°C range. That by Dr Aldrin and others found a 90% likelihood of a 1.2-3.5°C range.It might seem obvious that energy-balance models are better: do they not fit what is actually happening? Yes, but that is not the whole story. Myles Allen of Oxford University points out that energy-balance models are better at representing simple and direct climate feedback mechanisms than indirect and dynamic ones. Most greenhouse gases are straightforward: they warm the climate. The direct impact of volcanoes is also straightforward: they cool it by reflecting sunlight back. But volcanoes also change circulation patterns in the atmosphere, which can then warm the climate indirectly, partially offsetting the direct cooling. Simple energy-balance models cannot capture this indirect feedback. So they may exaggerate volcanic cooling.This means that if, for some reason, there were factors that temporarily muffled the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions on global temperatures, the simple energy-balance models might not pick them up. They will be too responsive to passing slowdowns. In short, the different sorts of climate model measure somewhat different things.Clouds of uncertaintyThis also means the case for saying the climate is less sensitive to CO₂emissions than previously believed cannot rest on models alone. There must be other explanations—and, as it happens, there are: individual climatic influences and feedback loops that amplify (and sometimes moderate) climate change.Begin with aerosols, such as those from sulphates. These stop the atmosphere from warming by reflecting sunlight. Some heat it, too. But on balance aerosols offset the warming impact of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Most climate models reckon that aerosols cool the atmosphere by about 0.3-0.5°C. If that underestimated aerosols’ effects, perhaps it might explain the lack of recent warming.Yet it does not. In fact, it may actually be an overestimate. Over the past few years, measurements of aerosols have improved enormously. Detailed data from satellites and balloons suggest their cooling effect is lower (and their warming greater, where that occurs). The leaked assessment from the IPCC (which is still subject to review andrevision) suggested that aerosols’ estimated radiative “forcing”—their warming or cooling effect—had changed from minus 1.2 watts per square metre of the Earth’s surface in the 2007 assessment to minus 0.7W/m ² now: ie, less cooling.One of the commonest and most important aerosols is soot (also known as black carbon). This warms the atmosphere because it absorbs sunlight, as black things do. The most detailed study of soot was published in January and also found more net warming than had previously been thought. It reckoned black carbon had a direct warming effect of around 1.1W/m ². Though indirect effects offset some of this, the effect is still greater than an earlier estimate by the United Nations Environment Programme of 0.3-0.6W/m ².All this makes the recent period of flat temperatures even more puzzling. If aerosols are not cooling the Earth as much as was thought, then global warming ought to be gathering pace. But it is not. Something must be reining it back. One candidate is lower climate sensitivity.A related possibility is that general-circulation climate models may be overestimating the impact of clouds (which are themselves influenced by aerosols). In all such models, clouds amplify global warming, sometimes by a lot. But as the leaked IPCC assessment says, “the cloud feedback remains the most uncertain radiative feedback in climate models.” It is even possible that some clouds may dampen, not amplify global warming—which may also help explain the hiatus in rising temperatures. If clouds have less of an effect, climate sensitivity would be lower.So the explanation may lie in the air—but then again it may not. Perhaps it lies in the oceans. But here, too, facts get in the way. Over the past decade the long-term rise in surface seawater temperatures seems to have stalled (see chart 2), which suggests that the oceans are not absorbing as much heat from the atmosphere.As with aerosols, this conclusion is based on better data from new measuring devices. But it applies only to the upper 700 metres of the sea. What is going on below that—particularly at depths of 2km or more—is obscure. A study in Geophysical Research Letters by Kevin Trenberth of America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research and others found that 30% of the ocean warming in the past decade has occurred in the deep ocean (below 700 metres). The study says a substantial amount of global warming is going into the oceans, and the deep oceans are heating up in an unprecedented way. If so, that would also help explain the temperature hiatus.Double-A minusLastly, there is some evidence that the natural (ie, non-man-made) variability of temperatures may be somewhat greater than the IPCC has thought. A recent paper byKa-Kit Tung and Jiansong Zhou in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences links temperature changes from 1750 to natural changes (such as sea temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean) and suggests that “the anthropogenic global-warming trends might have been overestimated by a factor of two in the second half of the 20th century.” It is possible, therefore, that both the rise in temperatures in the 1990s and the flattening in the 2000s have been caused in part by natural variability.So what does all this amount to? The scientists are cautious about interpreting their findings. As Dr Knutti puts it, “the bottom line is that there a re several lines of evidence, where the observed trends are pushing down, whereas the models are pushing up, so my personal view is that the overall assessment hasn’t changed much.”But given the hiatus in warming and all the new evidence, a small reduction in estimates of climate sensitivity would seem to be justified: a downwards nudge on various best estimates from 3°C to 2.5°C, perhaps; a lower ceiling (around 4.5°C), certainly. If climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, climate sensitivity would be on negative watch. But it would not yet be downgraded.Equilibrium climate sensitivity is a benchmark in climate science. But it is a very specific measure. It attempts to describe what would happen to the climate once all the feedback mechanisms have worked through; equilibrium in this sense takes centuries—too long for most policymakers. As Gerard Roe of the University of Washington argues, even if climate sensitivity were as high as the IPCC suggests, its effects would be minuscule under any plausible discount rate because it operates over such long periods. So it is one thing to ask how climate sensitivity might be changing; a different question is to ask what the policy consequences might be.For that, a more useful measure is the transient climate response (TCR), the temperature you reach after doubling CO₂gradually over 70 years. Unlike the equilibrium response, the transient one can be observed directly; there is much less controversy about it. Most estimates put the TCR at about 1.5°C, with a range of 1-2°C. Isaac Held of America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently calculated his “personal bestestimate” for the TCR: 1.4°C, reflecting the new estimates for aerosols and natural variability.That sounds reassuring: the TCR is below estimates for equilibrium climate sensitivity. But the TCR captures only some of the warming that those 70 years of emissions would eventually generate because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for much longer.As a rule of thumb, global temperatures rise by about 1.5°C for each trillion tonnes of carbon put into the atmosphere. The world has pumped out half a trillion tonnes of carbon since 1750, and temperatures have risen by 0.8°C. At current rates, the next half-trillion tonnes will be emitted by 2045; the one after that before 2080.Since CO₂accumulates in the atmosphere, this could increase temperatures compared with pre-industrial levels by around 2°C even with a lower sensitivity and perhaps nearer to 4°C at the top end of the estimates. Despite all the work on sensitivity, no one really knows how the climate would react if temperatures rose by as much as 4°C. Hardly reassuring.。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文经济学人
When bosses walk in employees’ shoes当老板站在员工的角度思考It is hard for managers to understand what life is like for staff. But not impossible 管理者很难理解员工的处境，但也不是不可能Any manager worth their salt knows the value of spending time “walking in their customers’ shoes”. There are many ways to do it. You can observe customers in their natural habitat.任何称职的管理者都知道花时间“站在客户的角度思考”的价值。
想做到这一点有很多办法可行。
你可以对处在自然状态下的顾客进行观察。
Pernod Ricard’s boss recently told Bloomberg, a news service, about his habit of bar-hopping in order to see what people want to drink. Such research is a lot less fun if your company makes soap dispensers for public toilets but the same principle applies.保乐力加的老板最近向彭博社(一家新闻服务机构)透露，他经常会去酒吧看看人们爱喝什么酒。
如果你公司的产品是公厕皂液器，那这种研究方式就不太合适了，不过道理都是一样的。
You can be a customer yourself, buying your company’s products, ringing your own helplines and enduring the same teeth-grinding muzak. Or you can hear from your customers directly.你可以试着购买自家的产品，拨打自家的客服热线，忍受让人咬牙切齿的同款音乐。
考研英语经济学人文章阅读训练三十五
No one knows how many people live in North Macedonia没有人知道北马其顿究竟有多少人Which makes planning hard for the government这使得政府难以制定计划It is an odd admission for the boss of a national statistical agency.Not only are many of his numbers wrong,says Apostol Simovski,head of North Macedonia’s statistical office,but he has no idea what the right ones might be.Officially,there are2.08m people in his country.In fact,he says:“I am afraid there are no more than1.5m,but I cannot prove it.”对于一个国家的统计机构负责人来说，这样坦言显得有些奇怪。
据北马其顿统计局局长阿普尔斯托尔·西莫夫斯基称，不仅他手中的许多数据是错误的，而且他甚至都不知道真实的数据是多少。
据官方数据显示，该国拥有208万人口。
但实际上，他说：“我估计只有不到150万，但我没办法证明究竟是多少。
”Countless calculations—income per head,number of bathtubs per head—depend on knowing how many heads there are.If Mr Simovski is right and there are27.5%fewer people in North Macedonia than officially estimated, then GDP per head,among other things,will be much higher.However, the true population may be between1.6m and1.8m,says Izet Zeqiri,an economist.Until there is a census,no one will know.不尽其数的数据统计（例如人均收入、人均浴缸数）都建立在了解人口数量的基础上。
2016考研英语一答案：阅读理解Text 3
2016考研英语一答案：阅读理解Text 3
31: B. skepticism
32: A. winning trust from consumers
33: C. less severe
34: A. has an impact on their decision
35: B. The necessary amount of companies' spending on it is unknown.
本文节选自《经济学人》（The Economist）名为The Halo Effect的文章。
文章主要谈论的是企业社会责任政策(Corporate social responsibility，CSR)。
开篇先从诺贝尔经济学家Milton Friedman的评论引出作者对CSR的看法，“CSR的政策并不是对股东财富的浪费，新的研究表明——CSR很可能对公司产生货币价值（至少在他们被指控腐败时）。
”全文围绕“CSR是如何给公司的业务增值”展开，并举出具体的例子和研究进行阐述。
首先提出企业责任政策花费虽然大，但是能因此博得顾客的好感。
之后则指出全面实施CSR项目的企业在受到诉讼时，法官也会在审判的时候排除政治因素而优先考虑企业之前的CSR担当，从而给予相对略低的罚金。
最后文章指出到底公司对这方面的花费是多少虽然不确定，但至少确定的是企业责任能帮助它们在法律面前获得相对较轻的处罚。
2019经济学人考研英文文章阅读三十六
Why Pakistan has so many quacks巴基斯坦为什么有那么多庸医？With real doctors in short supply,phoneys abound真正的医生供不应求，庸医却泛滥猖獗Mohammad Zahid sat sullenly in the office where minutes earlier he had been doling out advice,pills and injections to a long line of patients.His customers had melted away at the sudden arrival of Saeed Asghar and his police escort.穆罕默德·扎希德闷闷不乐地坐在办公室里，而就在几分钟前，他还在这里给排成长队的病人提医嘱、开药和打针。
赛义德·阿斯哈尔和警察护卫队的突然出现把他的病人都吓跑了。
Dr Asghar,deputy director of the Anti-Quackery Department of the Pakistani province of Punjab,spends his days hunting for people practising medicine without the proper qualifications.阿斯哈尔是巴基斯坦旁遮普省反庸医部门的副主任，他每天都在寻找没有资质的医药从业人员。
Mr Zahid briefly tried to claim he was a proper doctor,before admitting he was not when his paperwork was checked.In fact,he had been trained only to help a pharmacist dispense medicine.扎希德曾一度试图狡辩，声称他是一名合格的医生，直到检查他的资质证书时才不得不承认他并不是一名合格的医生。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文经济学人
A global house-price slump is coming全球房价即将暴跌It won’t blow up the financial system, but it will be scary虽然不会摧毁金融体系，但仍然令人恐慌Over the past decade owning a house has meant easy money. Prices rose reliably for years and then went bizarrely ballistic in the pandemic. Yet today if your wealth is tied up in bricks and mortar it is time to get nervous.过去十年里，拥有一套房就意味着轻松赚钱。
房价多年来一直稳步上涨，甚至在疫情期间还异乎寻常地飙升了。
然而现如今，如果你的财富被套牢在房产上，那你应该感到紧张了。
House prices are now falling in nine rich economies. The drops in America are small so far, but in the wildest markets they are already dramatic. In condo-crazed Canada homes cost 9% less than they did in February.九个发达经济体的房价都在下跌。
到目前为止，美国房价的跌幅还不大，但最疯狂的市场的房价跌幅已经非常大了。
在热衷于共管公寓的加拿大，房价较今年2月下跌了9%。
As inflation and recession stalk the world a deepening correction is likely—even estate agents are gloomy. Although this will not detonate global banks as in 2007-09, it will intensify the downturn, leave a cohort of people with wrecked finances and start a political storm.随着通货膨胀和经济衰退的风险在全球范围内蔓延，房价或将迎来一场深度调整——甚至房地产经纪人也对此感到悲观。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文经济学人
One afternoon in April 2020, I took an old bamboo rod out of my shed and cut it to a length of 115cm. Stood on the ground, it came about halfway up my chest. I laid it on a scrubby patch of our garden on the island of Aegina, in Greece: one end next to a tough-looking dandelion, the other pointed northwards. Then I dug up the dandelion with a trowel and replanted it at the other end of the stick. A small step for humans, but quite the leap for the dandelion.2020年4月的一个下午，我从棚子里拿出一根旧竹竿，把它切成了115厘米的长度。
立在地上，它的长度大概是到我胸部高度的一半。
我把它搁在花园中的一小片灌木丛生的土地上，花园位于希腊的埃吉纳岛（Aegina）上。
竹竿的一端挨着一株看上去很强韧的蒲公英，另一端朝着北方。
随后我用泥铲把蒲公英挖了出来，再把它重新种进竹竿另一端的土里。
对人类来说，这是一小步的距离，但对蒲公英而言却是一次不小的跃进。
This 115cm corresponds to a particular measurement. It is the present average velocity of climate change — how fast the effects of global heating are moving across the surface of the planet — and thus represents the speed we need to move in order for the conditions around us to stay the same. It also implies a direction: the bubble habitats where different forms of life can survive and thrive are moving uphill, and towards the poles.这115厘米所对应的是一个特定的尺寸。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文经济学人
Have baby, stay in school生孩子还是继续上学？Why teenage mothers in Zimbabwe struggle to get educated为什么津巴布韦的未成年妈妈很难继续接受教育Brilliant Ndlovu has never really known childhood. Since the age of seven she has headed her household in Tsholotsho, a town in rural western Zimbabwe, after her parents went to work abroad. The oldest of five, she scraped a living growing crops while trying to keep up with her schoolwork.聪明的恩德洛夫从未真正经历过童年。
自从7岁起，她的父母去国外工作后，她就一直在津巴布韦西部乡村小镇茨洛特肖主持家务。
她是五个孩子中的老大，一边靠种庄稼勉强糊口，一边还要努力完成学业。
But in 2020 the covid-19 pandemic struck, coming shortly after a devastating drought. Farmers could not afford to pay child labourers like Ms Ndlovu. “So I looked for a man to help support my family,” she recalls. She found one who demanded sex in exchange for money. Aged 17, she got pregnant.但在2020年，经历一场毁灭性的干旱后，新冠疫情又紧随其后。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文经济学人
Britain’s young face a poorer future英国年轻一代面临更加贫穷的未来Economic statistics will never fully capture the extent of the sacrifices of Britain’s youth during the pandemic. For a generation of students and pupils it was a lost chance to make friends, explore who they are and, gradually, become adults — as well as to learn, in person. In the face of the deaths in the broader population, it is easy to dismiss as frivolous the setbacks of those who missed partying, travelling and dating during the long months stuck inside but these are still years of carefree youth they will not get back. What is more, most of these privations were primarily to protect those from older generations, the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.经济统计数字将永远不能完全反映出英国青年在这场大流行病中牺牲了多少。
对于这一代学生来说，他们失去了结交朋友、探索自我并逐渐成长为人,以及亲身学习的机会。
在有人死于新冠疫情之际，我们很容易认为被困在室内长达数月而错过聚会、旅行和约会的人所经历的这些挫折无关痛痒，但这是他们再也无法重返的无忧无虑的青春时光。
考研英语碎片阅读：《经济学人》选篇
考研英语碎片阅读：《经济学人》选篇Saudi Arabia's women drivers沙特女司机Ovarian issue卵巢问题？Will Saudi women ever be allowed behind the wheel of a car?沙特的女性能获得开车权吗？WHEN a group of Saudi women first took to the kingdom's roads to flout its ban on female drivers, they publicised their protest by fax and videocassette. The 47 participants suffered fines, travel bans, social ostracism and, in some cases, the loss of government jobs. The ban itself, 23 years and many protests later, remains. But much else has changed.当第一次一群沙特女同志占据王国之路来嘲笑禁止女性司机这一法令时，她们通过传真和录音机来将她们的抗议公之于众。
那47位参与者遭到罚款、旅行禁令、社会排斥异己在某些情况下，失去了政府部门工作。
这条法令，在历经23年并遭到无数次反抗之后，如今仍然保留着。
但是很多东西早已改变。
The campaigners behind a drive-along protest scheduled for October 26th have put it on Twitter, Facebook and a slick website. Their petition demanding that the government issue driving licences to women has gathered close to 17,000 signatures. A call for women to upload videos of themselves driving has already gathered dozens of clips. The footage of headscarved ladies navigating suburban traffic may scarcely be thrilling, but some have scored over 100,000 web viewings.策划10月26日单独驾驶抗议的活动者们已经将这一禁令发布到推特，脸谱以及一个热门网站上。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文阅读经济学人
China’s “dreamchild” is stealthily winning the battery race中国“梦之子”悄然引领电池竞赛In America, if you want to dominate an industry, you channel your inner Elon Musk and shout about it. But CATL, the Chinese company that makes batteries for some of Mr Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles (EVs), is different. When your columnist first contacted it in 2017, the brush-off was swift.在美国，如果你想主宰一个行业，你就得调动自己内心的埃隆·马斯克并大声咆哮。
但为马斯克的部分特斯拉电动汽车供应电池的中国公司宁德时代则不同。
当笔者在2017年第一次与该公司取得联系时，对方直接拒绝了我们的采访。
“We want to concentrate on our products only and do not accept any interviews at present.” These days it is only marginally less blunt. “Unfortunately, we are sorry that it’s hard for us to arrange [interviews] at the moment.” The temptation is to give it a dose of its own medicine and ignore it.“我们只想专注于我们的产品，目前不接受任何采访。
”如今，该公司的态度没有过去那么生硬了，但也只是稍微缓和。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文经济学人
A new study finds preschool can be detrimental to children一项新的研究发现，学前教育对孩子可能并没有好处But the picture may not be as gloomy as it seems但前景或许并不那么悲观Free, universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds is a key component of the Democrats’ agenda. Proponents say pre-kindergarten, or pre-K, education can be transformative for children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. A new study seems to contradict this.为三、四岁儿童提供免费、普及的学前教育是民主党议程的一个关键组成部分。
支持者表示，学前教育对儿童（尤其是对那些来自弱势家庭的儿童来说）能够起到变革性作用。
一项新的研究似乎得出了与之相矛盾的结论。
It finds that children who attended a pre-K programme in Tennessee actually scored worse on a range of education and behavioural measures. Yet this might reflect general improvements in early education rather than the impact of one programme.该研究发现，在田纳西州参加学前教育项目的儿童实际上在一系列教育和行为指标上得分更低。
不过，这可能反映了早期教育的普遍改善，而不是一个项目的影响。
考研英语《经济学人》选读
考研英语《经济学人》选读在考研英语的备考过程中，阅读部分的重要性不言而喻。
而《经济学人》作为一份具有广泛影响力和高质量内容的英文刊物，成为众多考研学子提升阅读能力和积累语言素材的重要资源。
《经济学人》涵盖了政治、经济、科技、文化等多个领域的内容，其文章不仅语言地道、表达精准，还具有深刻的见解和独特的视角。
通过阅读《经济学人》，考生可以接触到丰富多样的话题，从而拓宽自己的知识面和思维广度。
首先，从语言层面来看，《经济学人》中的词汇丰富且用法灵活。
很多考研英语词汇在《经济学人》的文章中都能找到生动的运用实例。
比如，“proliferation”（激增；扩散）这个相对较难的词汇，在一篇关于新兴技术快速发展的文章中可能就会出现“the proliferation of artificial intelligence”这样的表述。
再比如，“mitigate”（减轻；缓和）这个词，可能会在讨论环境问题的文章里被用到，如“measures to mitigate climate change”。
除了词汇，《经济学人》中的句子结构也十分多样，既有简单明了的短句，也有复杂冗长的长句。
长句的分析和理解对于提升考研英语阅读中的长难句分析能力至关重要。
例如：“Despite the challenges posed by the economic downturn and the uncertainties brought about by geopolitical tensions, the company managed to maintain a steady growth rate by implemen ting innovative strategies and leveraging its core competencies”这样的长句包含了多种从句和短语，通过对其结构的剖析和理解，能够帮助考生更好地应对考研英语阅读中的类似句子。
考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：收入与幸福感
考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：收入与幸福感Happiness and Income收入与幸福感Everything that rises must converge幸福的家庭总是相似的Emerging markets are catching up with the West inthe happiness stakes新兴国家的幸福指数将要赶上西方POETS, songwriters and left-wing politicians hate theidea, but for decades opinion-poll evidence has been clear: money buys happiness and thericher you are, the more likely you are to express satisfaction with your life. Until now. Asurvey of 43 countries published on October 30th by the Pew Research Centre of Washington,DC, shows that people in emerging markets are within a whisker of expressing the same levelof satisfaction as people in rich countries. It is the biggest qualification to the standard viewof happiness and income seen so far.诗人，作词家，左翼政治家总是反驳这样一个观点：钱可以买到幸福，一个人越有钱，他对生活的满意感就可能越高。
但是十年来民意调查却清楚证明了这一点。
不过，位于华盛顿特区的皮尤研究中心调查了43个国家后，发现发展中国家的人对生活满意度与富有国家的人们生活满意度相差无几。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文经济学人
What are the keys to a successful life?成功的关键是什么?No matter what your goals are in life, there is one great law that you need to obey in order to be successful: No one else is going to climb the ladder of success for you. No one else is responsible for your health, wealth, happiness, or success. From the day you leave your parents’ house and start to make your own choices, you are responsible for your life and the choices you make.无论你的人生目标是什么，要想成功，你必须遵守一条伟大的法则：没有人会替你登上成功的阶梯。
没有人会对你的健康、财富、幸福或成功负责。
从你离开父母家开始做出自己的选择的那一天起，你就要对自己的生活和选择负责。
You choose the job you work in, the person you live with, and how much you exercise every day. Only you can choose how you spend your time, and the decisions you make on a consistent basis will make or break your life.你可以选择你的工作、与你一起生活的另一伴以及每天的运动量。
只有你自己可以选择如何分配你的时间，而你所做的决定将会成就或毁掉你的生活。
考研时文阅读二选自《经济学人》
考研时文阅读二选自《经济学人》AMID the hubbub over a few less-bad-than-expected statistics, America’s economic debate has turned to the nature of the recovery. Optimists expect a vigorous rebound as confidence returns, pent-up demand is unleashed and massive government stimulus takes effect. Most observers, including this newspaper, are bracing for a long slog, as debt-laden consumers rebuild their savings, output growth remains weak and unemployment continues to rise. There is, however, something that eventually will have a much bigger impact on Americans’ prosperity than the slope of the recovery. That is the effect of the crisis on America’s potential rate of growth itself.在对一些比预期稍好的数据的聒噪中，对美国经济的争论倒向了恢复的一边。
乐观人士预计在信心回稳、抑制的需求得到释放以及政府大规模刺激方案取得成效的情况下，经济会有力的反弹。
包括本报在内的多数观察家则认为慢慢前路仍充满艰险，因为深陷债务泥潭的消费者在重新建立他们的储蓄，出口增长依然疲软而且未就业人数继续上升。
考研英语阅读理解外刊原文经济学人
The 19th century French philosopher Auguste Comte got it wrong: demography is not destiny.19世纪法国哲学家奥古斯特•孔德错了：人口并不决定命运。
Population trends are some of the strongest forces in economics, affecting global prosperity, the growth of individual nations and the strength of public finances. But reducing the success of countries and regions to their trends in births, deaths and migration is a simplification too far.各种人口趋势是经济学中最强大的一些力量，影响着全球繁荣、单个国家的增长和公共财政的实力。
但是，将国家和区域的成功归结于其出生、死亡和人口移徙趋势是一种过于简单化的做法。
As the coronavirus pandemic has shown, the confident predictions in 2020 of a lockdown baby boom followed by the 2021 fear of a Covid baby bust demonstrate that demographic trends are far less stable than often imagined. Small changes in fertility, mortality and migration can have immense effects.正如新冠疫情所显示的那样，2020年对疫情封锁会带来一波婴儿潮的自信预测，以及接下来的2021年对疫情会造成婴儿荒的担忧，表明人口趋势远没有通常想象的那么稳定。
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Have the top0.1%of Americans made out like bandits since2000?自2000年以来，美国最富有的0.1%的人像强盗一样地在积累财富？Or have they merely stood still?还是说只是维持不变？It is a truth universally acknowledged that inequality in the rich world is high and rising.Or,at least,it used to be.A growing band of economists are challenging the received wisdom,pointing out that trends in the distribution of income and wealth may not be as bad as is often thought. Two recent studies focus on wealth inequality in America,providing further ammunition to the dissenters.发达国家的社会不平等现象十分严重，并且仍在日益加剧，这已然是一个举世公认的事实。
或者说，至少曾经如此。
然而，越来越多的经济学家对人们普遍接受的观点提出了质疑，他们指出，收入与财富分配的趋势或许并非像人们通常认为的那样变得越来越糟糕。
最近两项有关美国财富不平等的研究为持异议者提供了更多的论据。
Measuring wealth is harder than it may seem.People are liable to under-report their asset holdings on official surveys,whereas it is hard to measure the true value of things like private companies and art works.财富的衡量比想象中更加困难。
在面对官方调查时，人们倾向于少报自己所拥有的资产额，而对于诸如私人公司和艺术品之类的东西，更是难以衡量其真正的价值。
Economists are using increasingly sophisticated methods to get a sense of who owns what.One popular method is to examine income earned on investments,such as interest payments from bonds,assume a rate of return,then multiply up to calculate the value of the investment.经济学家用以计算一个人拥有多少财富的方法也越来越复杂。
广为流行的一种方法是计算其投资所得收益（例如债券的利息支出），即假定一个回报率，然后根据乘积来计算投资价值。
In a newly updated working paper Matthew Smith of the Treasury department,Owen Zidar of Princeton University and Eric Zwick of the University of Chicago use this method to gauge American wealth inequality.Previous estimates have relied on the assumption that all people receive the same rates of return on a given type of investment.美国财政部的马修·史密斯、普林斯顿大学的欧文·齐达尔以及芝加哥大学的埃里克·兹威克在一份最新的研究报告中使用该方法来衡量美国的财富不平等程度。
过去，人们往往假定所有人在某一特定类型的投资中所获得的回报率是相同的，并以此进行估算。
That may be misleading.The rich tend to plump for riskier investments, which command higher rates of return—implying,in turn,that the stock of wealth from which they derive that income is smaller than it would otherwise appear.但这种方式或许具有误导性。
富人往往倾向于选择风险更大、回报率更高的投资，这反过来又意味着，他们实际拥有的财富相比根据收益推算出的要少一些。
Allowing for different rates of return,the paper’s headline results suggest that America’s top0.1%own roughly15%of the country’s private wealth. Their share has risen since the1980s,but by less than other economists believe(some papers find that it has jumped to20%or more).And according to the new paper,that measure of wealth inequality has been stable since the middle of the2000s.这份研究报告将回报率的差异性考虑在内，由此得出了重要结论，美国最富有的0.1%的人拥有着全国15%的私人财富。
自上世纪80年代以来，这一比例一直呈上升趋势，但上升的幅度低于某些经济学家的预期（一些研究认为，这一比例已经激增至20%甚至更高水平）。
据这项最新的研究显示，美国财富不平等程度自2005年以来一直保持在一个稳定的水平。
But does it make sense to count only private wealth?In another new working paper Sylvain Catherine,Max Miller and Natasha Sarin of the University of Pennsylvania argue that accrued entitlements to Social Security should also be included.Someone with access to a public pension is surely better off than someone without.但仅计算私人财富是否有意义呢？宾夕法尼亚大学的西尔万·凯瑟琳、马克斯·米勒和娜塔莎·沙林在另一篇最新的研究报告中指出，社会保障所得权益也应该被计算在内。
领取公共养老金的人肯定比未领取的人生活得更好。
Crucially,too,an expansion of Social Security means that poorer folk have less need to save for retirement.That distorts measures of wealth inequality which count only private nest-eggs.(Sweden,surprisingly enough,has very high private-wealth inequality,in part because of its cradle-to-grave welfare system.)同样地，社会保障制度的发展减少了穷人攒钱养老的需求。
因此，以个人储蓄衡量财富不平等并不准确。
（令人惊讶的是，瑞典的私人财富不平等程度非常高，这在一定程度上是由于其“从摇篮到坟墓”的福利制度所致。
）In recent years the value of American Social Security wealth has jumped, in part because the population is ageing.It is also progressively distributed.Messrs Smith,Zidar and Zwick’s paper apportions this wealth between rich and poor.近年来，美国社保的财富价值正在猛增，这在一定程度上是由于人口老龄化所致。
越来越多的人能够享受到社保。
在史密斯、齐达尔和兹威克的研究中，他们将富人和穷人享有社保的财富价值按比例进行计算。
As the chart shows,measured inequality falls,while the wealth share of the very richest has remained remarkably flat over the past two decades. America is a highly unequal society—but it is not becoming ever more so.如图所示，在这种计算方式下，美国的财富不平等程度实则有所下降，而最富有的那些人所拥有的财富份额在过去20年里明显保持在一个稳定的水平。
美国确实是一个高度不平等的社会，但并没有变得愈发不平等。
(红色标注词为重难点词汇)重难点词汇：bandit[ˈbændɪt]n.强盗；土匪dissenter[dɪˈsentər]n.持异议者；反对者sophisticated[səˈfɪstɪkeɪtɪd]adj.复杂的；精致的plump for选定；支持apportion[əˈpɔːrʃn]vt.分配；分摊。