Passage Two Women earn less than men. For example, in 1988 the hourly wages of women in the U.S. were 26% less than those of men. The between male and female incomes varies with age. The gap between the labor incomes of young women and young men is much smaller than that between middle-aged women and men. It is also clear that jobs in which women are concentrated pay less. The larger the number of workers in an industry who are women, the lower the average wages. Why do women earn less than men Are the differences explained by the fact that women are looked down upon If so, the government has to intervene, to force the employers to pay equal wages to equal jobs. However, there is no agreement among economists about the causes of the gap. ①One view argues that women on the average have chosen low paying jobs in which workers enjoy the freedom of entering and leaving the labor force, which reduces their years of experience relative to men. Other people say the gap can also be explained by the difference in educational background which is shown in the difference in the marginal product between men and women. Much of the gap, however, has not been fully explained. It might be the result of some bias against women. It is this part that has produced calls for government action. What would happen if the government did intervene to increase the wages paid to women One possibility, is that incomes for women as a group might actually decline. An increase in wage decreases the quantity of labor input demanded, resulting in decreased employment as the rate of hiring new workers declines. The result will be a surplus of labor. Those who can find jobs might be better off while those who had jobs might find themselves out of work. The difference in labor incomes is most obvious between______
A. young men and young women
B. young women in the same industry
C. middle-aged men and middle-aged women
D. middle-aged women in the same industry
Passage One Londoners are great readers. They buy vast numbers of newspapers and magazines and of books-especially paperbacks, which are still comparatively cheap in spite of ever increasing rises in the costs of printing. They still continue to buy "proper" books, too, printed on good paper and hotrod between hard covers. There are many streets in London containing shops which specialize in book selling. Perhaps the best known of these is Charring Cross Road in the very heart of London. ① Here bookshops of all sorts and sizes are to be found, from the celebrated one which boasts of being "the biggest bookshop in the world" to the tiny, dusty little places which seem to have been left over from Dickens’ time. Some of these shops stock, or will obtain, any kind of book, but many of them specialize in second hand books, in art books, in foreign books, in books on philosophy, politics or any other of the myriad(无数的) subjects about which books may be written. One shop in this area specializes solely in books about ballet! Although it may be the most convenient place for Londoners to buy books, Charring Cross Road is not the cheapest. For the really cheap second hand volumes, the collector must venture off the beaten track, to Farringdon Road, for example, in the East Central district of London. Here there is nothing so grandiose(宏伟的) as bookshops. Instead, the booksellers come along each morning and tip out their sacks of books on to small barrows(流动售货车) which line the gutters. And the collectors, some professional and some amateur, who have been waiting for them, pounce(一把抓住) upon the dusty cascaded. In places like this one can still, occasionally, pick up for a few pence an old volume that may be worth many pounds. The book sellers on Farringdon Road______
A. keep fine bookshops
B. keep only small bookshops
C. sell books on hand carts
D. sell the same books as the bookshops on Charring Cross Road