Section B
Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
A) This is the land of opportunity. If that weren't already imp lied by the landscape—rolling green hills, palm trees, sun-kissed flowers—then it's evident in the many stories of people who grew up poor in these sleepy neighborhoods and rose to enormous success. People like Tri Tran, who fled Vietnam on a boat in 1986, showed up in San Jose with nothing, made it to MIT, and then founded the food-delivery start-up Munchery, which is valued at $300 million.
B) Indeed, data suggests that this is one of the best places to grow up poor in America. A child born in the early 1980s into a low-income family in San Jose had a 12.9 percent chance of becoming a high earner as an adult, according to a landmark study released in 2014 by the economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues from Harvard and Berkeley. That number—12.9 percent—may not seem remarkable, but it was: Kids in San Jose whose families fell in the bottom quintile (五分位数) of income nationally had the best shot in the country at reaching the top quintile.
C) By contrast, just 4.4 percent of poor kids in Charlotte moved up to the top; in Detroit the figure was 5.5 percent. San Jose had social mobility comparable to Denmark's and Canada's and higher than other progressive cities such as Boston and Minneapolis.
D) The reasons kids in San Jose performed so well might seem obvious. Some of the world's most innovative companies are located here, providing opportunities such as the one seized by a 12-year-old Mountain View resident named Steve Jobs when he called William Hewlett to ask for spare parts and subsequently received a summer job. This is a city of immigrants—38 percent of the city's population today is foreign-born—and immigrants and their children have historically experienced significant upward mobility in America. The city has long had a large foreign-born population (26.5 percent in 1990), leading to broader diversity, which, the Harvard and Berkeley economists say, is a good predictor of mobility.
E) Indeed, the streets of San Jose seem, in some ways, to embody the best of America. It's possible to drive in a matter of minutes from sleek (光亮的) office towers near the airport where people pitch ideas to investors, to single-family homes with orange trees in their yards, or to a Vietnamese mall. The libraries here offer programs in 17 languages, and there are areas filled with small businesses owned by Vietnamese immigrants, Mexican immigrants, Korean immigrants, and Filipino immigrants, to name a few.
F) But researchers aren't sure exactly why poor kids in San Jose did so well. The city has a low prevalence of children growing up in single-parent families, and a low level of concentrated poverty, both factors that usually mean a city allows for good intergenerational mobility. But San Jose also performs poorly on some of the measures correlated with good mobility. It is one of the most unequal places out of the 741 that the researchers measured, and it has high degrees of racial and economic segregation (隔离). Its schools underperform based on how much money there is in the area, said Ben Scuderi, a predoctoral fellow at the Equality of Opportunity Project at Harvard, which uses big data to study how to improve economic opportunities for low-income children. “There's a lot going on here which we don't totally understand,” he said. “It's interesting, because it kind of defies our expectations.”
G) The Chetty data shows that neighborhoods and places mattered for children born in the San Jose area of the 1980s. Whether the city still allows for upward mobility of poor kids today, though, is up for debate. Some of the indicators such as income inequality, measured by the Equality of Opportunity Project for the year 2000, have only worsened in the past 16 years.
H) Some San Jose residents say that as inequality has grown in recent years, upward mobility has become much more difficult to achieve. As Silicon Valley has become home to more successful companies, the flood of people to the area has caused housing prices to skyrocket. By most measures, San Jose is no longer a place where low-income, or even middle-income families, can afford to live. Rents in San Jose grew 42.6 percent between 2006 and 2014, which was the largest increase in the country during that time period. The city has a growing homelessness problem, which it tried to address byshutting down “The Jungle,” one of the largest homelessencampments (临时住地) in the nation, in 2014. Inequality is extreme: The Human Development Index—a measure of life expectancy, education and per capita (人均的) income—gives East San Jose a score of 4.85 out of 10, while nearby Cupertino, where Apple's headquarters sits, receives a 9.26. San Jose used to have a happy mix of factors—cheap housing, closeness to a rapidly developing industry, tightly-knit immigrant communities—that together opened up the possibility of prosperity for even its poorest residents. But in recent years, housing prices have skyrocketed, the region's rich and poor have segregated, and middle-class jobs have disappeared. Given this, the future for the region's poor doesn't look nearly as bright as it once did.
I) Leaders in San Jose are determined to make sure that the city regains its status as a place where even poor kids can access the resources to succeed. With Silicon Valley in its backyard, it certainly has the chance to do so. “I think there is a broad consciousness in the Valley that we can do better than to leave thousands of our neighbors behind through a period of extraordinary success,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said.
J) But in today's America—a land of rising inequality, increasing segregation, and stagnating (不增长的) middle-class wages—can the San Jose region really once again become a place of opportunity?
K) The idea that those at the bottom can rise to the top is central to America's ideas about itself. That such mobility has become more difficult in San Jose raises questions about the endurance of that foundational belief. After all, if the one-time land of opportunity can't be fixed, what does that say for the rest of America?
A) 这是一片充满机遇的土地。如果这不能够从如下的景观中得以证明——连绵起伏的绿色山丘、棕榈树、沐浴阳光的花朵——那么,成长于冷清社区,从一贫如洗到大获成功的诸多人的故事,也是一种见证。譬如特里·特兰,他于1986年乘船逃离越南,来到圣何塞时身无分文,却成功地进入了麻省理工学院,之后创立了食品配送企业Munchery(吃不厌的外卖订餐网站),目前该企业市值达3亿美元。
B) 39 事实上,数据显示,这里是美国最适合在贫困中长大的地方之一 。2014年,经济学家拉兹·切迪和他的来自哈佛大学、伯克利大学的同事们发布的一项具有里程碑意义的研究表明,在20世纪80年代初出生在圣何塞低收入家庭的孩子当中,成年后成为高收入者的几率为12.9%。这个数字——12.9%——似乎并不引人注目,但事实是: 39 在圣何塞,家庭收入处于全国收入分布倒数五分之一的孩子最有可能成为全国收入最高的五分之一群体中的一员。
C) 相比之下,夏洛特市只有4.4%的贫困家庭的孩子能进入上层社会;在底特律,这一数字是5.5%。 43 圣何塞的社会流动性与丹麦和加拿大相当,同时高于波士顿和明尼阿波利斯等其他进步城市。
D) 圣何塞的孩子表现如此出色的原因似乎是显而易见的。这里坐落着一些世界上最具创新精神的公司,这些公司为当地提供了很多机会。比如,山景城一个12岁的居民史蒂夫·乔布斯就抓住了这样一个机会。当时,他给威廉·休利特打电话要一些备用配件,结果就获得了一份暑期工作。 37 这是一座移民城市——如今这座城市38%的人口是在国外出生的——这些移民及其子女在美国历史上经历了显著的向上流动。长期以来,这座城市有着大量的国外出生人口(1990年国外出生人口的比例为26.5%),这为其带来了更广泛的多样性,哈佛和伯克利的经济学家们说,这是预测流动性的一个很好的指标。
E) 42 的确如此,圣何塞的街道在某些方面似乎体现了美国最好的一面。在这里,你可以在几分钟之内开车从机场附近光鲜亮丽的办公大楼(在这里,人们把自己的创意推销给投资者)到院子里栽种着橘子树的独栋房屋,或者是开到越南人的商场。这里的图书馆提供17种语言的课程,这里还有着许多由越南、墨西哥、韩国以及菲律宾(仅举几例)等国移民经营的小企业。
F) 45 但是研究人员并不完全清楚圣何塞的贫困孩子为什么表现得如此之好。这座城市中在单亲家庭中长大的孩子很少,而且集中贫困的程度也较低,而这两个因素通常意味着一个城市可以实现良好的代际流动。但是圣何塞在一些与良好流动性紧密相关的指标方面也表现得不佳。这座城市是研究人员考察的741座城市中最不平等的地方之一。这座城市的种族和经济隔离程度很高。哈佛大学机会平等项目的博士预科研究员本·斯库德利说,这里的学校表现不佳,其程度基于该地区有多少资金。机会平等项目通过大数据来研究如何改善低收入家庭孩子的经济机会。“这里进行着很多我们不能完全理解的事情。”他说道。“这很有趣,因为它有点出乎我们的意料。”
G) 40 切迪的数据显示,对于20世纪80年代出生在圣何塞地区的孩子来说,社区和地区很重要。然而,这个城市现在是否还允许贫穷孩子向上流动,尚有待讨论。机会平等项目在2000年衡量的一些指标,例如收入不平等,在过去的16年里一直在恶化。
H) 36 圣何塞的一些居民说,近年来,随着不平等现象的加剧,向上流动已经变得更加难以实现。随着硅谷聚集了越来越多成功的公司,大量人口涌入该地区,导致房价飙升。从很多方面来看,圣何塞已经不再是一个低收入甚至中等收入家庭能够生活下去的地方。圣何塞的房屋租金在2006年至2014年之间上涨了42.6%,这在全美范围内是同期涨幅最大的。这座城市的无家可归问题日益严重,2014年市当局试图通过关闭“丛林”来解决这一问题。“丛林”是这个国家规模最大的无家可归者临时住地之一。不平等达到了极端化的程度:人类发展指数——人类预期寿命、教育水平和人均收入的一个衡量指标——给了东圣何塞4.85分,满分10分,而附近的库比蒂诺作为苹果总部的所在地,获得了9.26分。圣何塞过去曾有各种幸福的因素——廉价的住房,靠近快速发展的行业,紧密联系的移民社区——这一切共同为其甚至最贫穷的居民开启了成功之机。 44 但是近几年来,房价飙升,该地区的富人和穷人被分隔开来,中产阶级也失去了工作。鉴于此,该地区的穷人的未来看起来也不像以前那么光明了。
I) 41 圣何塞的领导者决心让这座城市重回以前的状态,成为一个即使是贫穷的孩子也能获得成功的资源的地方。有硅谷在后院,这座城市当然有这样做的机会。圣何塞市市长山姆·利卡尔多说:“我认为,硅谷有一种广泛的意识,那就是,我们可以做得更好,而不是通过一段时期的非凡成功,把我们成千上万的邻居抛在身后。”
J) 但是在今天的美国——一个不平等现象日渐加剧、种族隔离日益严重、中产阶级工资停滞不前的地方——圣何塞地区真的能再次成为一个充满机遇的地方吗?
K) 38 底层的人们可以跻身为上层人士这一想法是美国观念的核心,而这种向上流动性在圣何塞已经变得更加困难,这引发了人们对这一基本信念能否持久的质疑。毕竟,如果这片曾经充满机遇的土地不能被“修复”,这对美国其他地区又意味着什么呢?
According to some people living in San Jose, it has become much harder for the poor to get ahead due to the increased inequality.
36.据生活在圣何塞的一些人说,由于不平等现象的加剧,穷人想要出人头地变得更加困难了。
In American history, immigrants used to have a good chance to move upward in society.
37.在美国历史上,移民曾有在社会中向上流动的大好机会。
If the problems of San Jose can't be solved, one of America's fundamental beliefs about itself can be shaken.
38.如果圣何塞的问题得不到解决,美国对自身的一个基本信念就会动摇。
San Jose was among the best cities in America for poor kids to move up the social ladder.
39.圣何塞是美国最适合贫穷孩子向上攀登社会阶梯的城市之一。
Whether poor kids in San Jose today still have the chance to move upward is questionable.
40.现在,圣何塞的贫穷的孩子们是否还有机会向上流动仍然是个问题。
San Jose's officials are resolved to give poor kids access to the resources necessary for success in life.
41.圣何塞的官员们决心让贫穷的孩子获得成功生活所必需的资源。
San Jose appears to manifest some of the best features of America.
42.圣何塞似乎体现了美国的一些最好的特点。
As far as social mobility is concerned, San Jose beat many other progressive cities in America.
43.就社会流动性而言,圣何塞胜过许多其他美国进步城市。
Due to some changes like increases in housing prices in San Jose, the prospects for its poor people have dimmed.
44.由于一些变化,比如圣何塞的房价上涨,其贫困人口的前景已经变得非常暗淡。
Researchers do not have a clear idea why poor children in San Jose achieved such great success several decades ago.
45.研究人员并不是很清楚为什么几十年前圣何塞的贫穷孩子们取得了如此巨大的成功。
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