北京分校

考试资讯

      考研英语阅读能力想提升，需要考生不断地日积月累阅读文章才能感受到进步!接下来，小编为帮助考生补习英语阅读能力的不足，特意整理——2022考研英语经济学人:全球人口减少,究竟是喜还是忧?供考生参考。

2022考研英语经济学人:全球人口减少,究竟是喜还是忧?

Bubonic plague killed between one and two thirds of Europeans when it struck in the 14th century. Covid-19, mercifully, has exacted nothing like that toll. Its demographic impact, however, is likely to be significantly larger than the nearly 3m tragic deaths so far attributed to the coronavirus thanks to an associated, worldwide baby bust.

14世纪，黑死病的爆发导致三分之一至三分之二的欧洲人丧生。幸运的是，新冠肺炎疫情不至于那么严重。然而，由于恰好撞上了全球生育低谷期，新冠疫情对人口结构的影响可能远远不止迄今为止其所造成的近300万人的死亡。

Births fell by about 15% in China in 2020, for example, while America recorded a 15% drop in monthly births between February and November of last year. As a consequence, the pandemic may have brought forward the projected date of peak global population by as much as a decade—into the 2050s.

例如，2020年中国的出生率下降了约15%，而美国在去年2月至11月间的出生率下降了15%。其结果是，此次疫情或将令全球人口高峰到来的预期时间提前了十年(即21世纪50年代)。

A shrinking planetary population might seem like a wholly welcome thing given the world’s environmental challenges. But fewer people may also mean fewer new ideas, yielding a very different sort of future than optimists tend to imagine.

考虑到全球面临的环境挑战，人口的减少似乎完全是一件可喜可贺的事。但与此同时，人口的减少或将意味着新想法的减少，从而导致一个与乐观主义者所想象的完全不同的未来。

Humankind did not attain a population of 1bn until the 19th century, but the total then grew rapidly. A second billion was added by the 1920s, and nearly six more in the hundred years since. Plenty of fretting has accompanied this explosion; “The Population Bomb”, a book by Paul Ehrlich published in 1968 (between billions three and four), warned of looming global famine.

直到19世纪，全球人口才达到10亿，但自那以后便开始迅速增长。到20世纪20年代，全球人口又增加了10亿，此后的100年里又增加了近60亿。人口的爆发式增长给人们带来了许多忧虑;保罗·埃利希在1968年出版的《人口炸弹》(当时全球人口在30亿至40亿之间)一书警告称，全球即将面临饥荒危机。

Most projections before the pandemic, however, suggested that global population would plateau in the latter half of the 21st century. Some analysts have argued that our numbers will not just stabilise but decline.

然而，新冠疫情爆发前的大多数预测都认为，全球人口将在21世纪下半夜趋于稳定。一些分析人士认为，人口数量不仅会稳定下来，甚至将会下降。

In “Empty Planet”, a book published in 2019, Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, two Canadian journalists, wrote that as fertility rates fall—a clear trend across rich and emerging economies—they tend ultimately to sink below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.

在2019年出版的《空荡荡的地球》一书中，两位加拿大记者达雷尔·布里克和约翰·伊比森写道，随着生育率的不断下降(在发达国家和新兴经济体尤为明显)，最终将低于人口替代率(即每名女性平均生育2.1个孩子)。

Nearly half the world’s people now live in countries with fertility rates below replacement levels. Barring an unforeseen demographic detour, global shrinkage looms.

目前，全球近一半的人口生活在生育率低于替代率的国家。除非出现不可预见的人口结构转折，否则全球人口萎缩将迫在眉睫。

Messrs Bricker and Ibbitson point to potentially positive consequences of a falling population such as reduced pressure on scarce resources, a decline in environmental damage, and increased autonomy for women, although they also note there would be economic disruptions, such as a scarcity of care workers and problems with the sustainability of government debt.

布里克和伊比森指出，人口减少可能会带来积极影响，比如减轻人们对稀缺资源的压力、减少对环境的破坏、增强女性的自主权，不过他们也指出，人口减少可能会导致经济混乱，比如护理人员的短缺以及政府债务的可持续性问题。

History also suggests population decline can be economically beneficial in some ways. In the wake of the Black Death in the 14th century, a scarcity of labour relative to available land and resources led to higher real wages and more freedom for workers.

历史也表明，人口减少在某些方面可以带来经济效益。在14世纪爆发黑死病后，劳动力相对于可用土地和资源出现了短缺，这让工人得到了更高的实际工资和更多自由。

Yet a recent paper inspired by their book, by Charles Jones, an economist at Stanford University, argues that over the long run any positive economic effects that come from a shrinking population may be cancelled out by the reduction in humankind’s creative capacity. If ideas drive growth and people are the source of ideas, he writes, then the fate of our species depends crucially on long-run population trends.

不过，斯坦福大学经济学家查尔斯·琼斯最近在该书的启发下撰写了一篇论文，他认为从长远来看，人口减少所带来的经济方面的积极影响都可能被人类创造力的减少所抵消。他写道，如果说想法驱动增长，而人是思想的源泉，那么人类的命运将主要取决于长期人口趋势。

In the absence of new ideas, growth must eventually grind to a halt. The adding of labour or resources or capital (machinery and such) to an economy can boost income, but with diminishing returns; in the absence of technological progress, ore becomes harder and costlier to mine and there are ever fewer valuable tasks to be done by an extra worker or industrial robot.

在缺乏新想法的情况下，经济增长必将陷入停滞。向一个经济体中增加劳动力、资源或资本(比如机械等)可以增加收入，但带来的收益却是递减的;在缺少技术进步的情况下，矿石开采将会愈加困难，成本也将更高，增交给新增添的工人1或工业机器人来完成的有价值的任务也会越来越少。

New ideas, though, allow an economy to do more with less or create new and valuable tasks to occupy labour and capital. Technological progress has thus enabled steady growth in real income per person over the past two centuries even as global population has soared.

而一个新的想法却能让一个经济体用更少的钱做更多的事，或者创造有价值的新任务，是劳动力和资本各尽其用。因此，在过去两个世纪里，虽然全球人口正在大幅增长，但技术进步却使人均实际收入稳步增长。

But new ideas must themselves be produced. An economy can increase the flow of ideas by adjusting its use of human resources: by investing more in education and encouraging more people to work in research rather than production, for instance.

但首先需要产生新想法。一个经济体可以通过调整人力资源配置以创造更多的想法：比如在教育上加大投资，鼓励更多的人从事研究而非生产。

But while these solutions sufficed to generate lots of new knowledge in the 20th century, Mr Jones says, they are themselves subject to diminishing returns. (The share of a population working in R&D can only rise so high, for example, and as it does the productivity of each additional researcher is likely to drop.)

但琼斯表示，尽管这些解决方案足以在20世纪产生大量新知识，但它们自身的收益却在下降。(比如从事研发工作的人口比例只能增长至某一水平，而后每增加一个研究人员，生产率可能会下降。)

A decline in the absolute number of brains might thus place a serious dampener on innovation, he writes, and thus on prospects for continued growth in incomes. Using a simple model, Mr Jones suggests that the world may face two potential outcomes in future.

他写道，大脑绝对数量的下降可能会严重抑制创新，从而影响收入持续增长的前景。琼斯先生建立了一个简单的模型，他认为世界在未来可能面临两种潜在的结果。

If fertility stabilises at a high enough level, an “expanding cosmos” scenario awaits, in which the stock of knowledge, population and incomes all rise ever upward. Alternatively, a cycle of falling population and reduced idea creation could lead to an “empty planet” outcome, in which living standards stagnate while population figures dwindle.

如果生育率稳定在一个足够高的水平，等待我们的将是一个“宇宙扩张”的情景——知识储备、人口和收入都将不断增长。另一种结果是，人口减少和想法减少的不断循环可能会导致一个“空荡荡的地球”，即人们的生活水平随人口减少而停滞不前。

 

重难点词汇：

attribute to 把…归因于

diminish [dɪˈmɪnɪʃ] v. 减少;缩小

stagnate [ˈstæɡneɪt] v. 停滞;淤塞

      以上是“2022考研英语经济学人:全球人口减少,究竟是喜还是忧?”，希望对2022考研考生们，在英语阅读上面有所帮助!祝2022考研顺利!

推荐阅读：

2022考研英语经济学人文章(5月份)汇总

2022考研英语经济学人文章(4月份)汇总

考研英语每日一词总结