Question
Answer: B. The paragraph’s central move is to separate two questions (workers vs children) and to recast the demand for higher fertility as one policy preference among several. B captures both the analytical separation and the prescriptive upshot. • Runner-up: A. Tempting because it lists the alternative levers the paragraph cites. But A’s emphasis is on the historical record, not on the conflation of the two questions, which is the paragraph’s analytical hinge. True but partial.
• C. Too strong: “demographically unjustified” overshoots the paragraph, which says only that the
preference should be presented as a preference rather than a necessity.
• D. Descriptive-to-prescriptive shift: the paragraph does not say demographers should “stop”
treating fertility as a problem.
Detailed solution
Q17. Answer: B. The paragraph’s central move is to separate two questions (workers vs children) and to recast the demand for higher fertility as one policy preference among several. B captures both the analytical separation and the prescriptive upshot. • Runner-up: A. Tempting because it lists the alternative levers the paragraph cites. But A’s emphasis is on the historical record, not on the conflation of the two questions, which is the paragraph’s analytical hinge. True but partial.
• C. Too strong: “demographically unjustified” overshoots the paragraph, which says only that the
preference should be presented as a preference rather than a necessity.
15
CAT-plus VARC Simulation
24 Questions | 40 Minutes
• D. Descriptive-to-prescriptive shift: the paragraph does not say demographers should “stop”
treating fertility as a problem.