OG-7-39

mjiirggh

39. Which of the following alternative explanations of the change in the cash value of children would be most likely to be put forward by sociological economists as they are described in the passage? (B) The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because their expected earnings over the course of a lifetime increased greatly. (D) The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because compulsory education laws reduced the supply, and thus raised the costs, of available child labor.

B is the best answer. According to the author, practitioners of the new “sociological economics” explain sociological phenomena “solely in terms of their economic determinants” and “tend to view all human behavior as directed primarily by the principle of maximizing economic gain’ (lines 85-98). This choice provides just such an economic explanation for the nineteenth-century rise in the cash value of children.

D uses an economic argument to explain the change, but here the economic factors at work are the result of a change.

不明白，有点强词夺理啊。

fhr6568

本文的第二段明显给出因果关系:

During the nineteenth century, she argues, the concept of the “useful” child who contributed to the family economy gave way gradually to the present-day notion of the “useless” child who, though producing no income for, and indeed extremely costly to, its parents, is yet considered emotionally “priceless.” Well established among segments of the middle and upper classes by the mid-1800’s, this new view of childhood spread throughout society in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as reformers introduced child-labor regulations and compulsory education laws predicated in part on the assumption that a child’s emotional value made child labor taboo.

换言之, emotional price的提高------->child-labor regulations and compulsory education laws

所以(D)是因果颠倒, 正如OG所解释的..