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      考研英语水平的进步，不仅要记单词，还需要阅读外语文献等资料。接下来，小编为2024考研者们，整理出——2024考研英语同源外刊5月:影响生育率的因素，供考生参考。

2024考研英语同源外刊5月:影响生育率的因素

There is a town in western Japan named Nagi that’s famous for making babies. Its fertility rate in 2021 was 2.68 lifetime births per woman, compared with 1.3 for Japan as a whole, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal that my Opinion colleague Jessica Grose recently cited. Delegations from elsewhere in Japan and abroad have come to Nagi to learn its secret formula. Is it the free medical care for all children? The affordable child care? The cash gifts to new mothers?

在日本西部有一个叫奈义的镇子，以生娃著称。根据我的观点栏目同事杰西卡·格罗斯近日引用过的一篇《华尔街日报》文章，2021年这里的生育率是每名女性生育2.68个孩子，相比之下日本总体的数字是1.3.日本各地乃至海外纷纷派人到奈义取经。是因为所有孩子都有免费医疗吗?成本低廉的保育?刚生育的母亲可以得到现金馈赠?

I’ve been considering another theory. Maybe people in Nagi are having babies because other people in Nagi are having babies. That would be what economists call a “peer effect.” We are social animals and we take our cues from family, friends and sometimes even passers-by. Peer effects could help explain the decline in fertility as well: It could be that in most of the world, people are having fewer babies partly because other people are having fewer babies. That would explain why so many towns and countries are putting in Nagi-like pronatalist measures but not getting Nagi-like results.

我在考虑另一种解释。也许奈义人要孩子是因为其他奈义人要孩子。也就是经济学家所说的“同群效应”。我们是社会性动物，会受家人、朋友、有时甚至包括路人的影响。同群效应也可以解释生育率的下降：可能在世界上大多数地方，生育的减少部分是因为其他人生的孩子数量减少了。这就解释了为什么很多城镇和国家也有跟奈义一样的生育激励措施，但没能产生奈义那样的效果。

Researchers have claimed to find peer effects on obesity, smoking and drinking, so it’s plausible that they influence fertility. We all know of siblings, in-laws and friends who have their first children around the same time. George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate economist from the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in a 1997 paper in the journal Econometrica that “social decisions — such as the demand for education, the practice of discrimination, the decision to marry, divorce and bear children, and the decision whether or not to commit crimes — are not simple choices based primarily on individual considerations.”

研究人员称在肥胖、吸烟和饮酒方面都能找到同群效应，因此影响生育也说得通。我们都认识某些同胞、姻亲和朋友是差不多同时生下第一个孩子的。加州大学伯克利分校经济学家、诺贝尔奖得主乔治·阿克洛夫在1997年发表于《计量经济学》的一篇论文中说，“社会性决策”——比如教育需求、歧视举动、是否结婚、离婚和要孩子、是否犯罪——并非主要基于个人考量的简单抉择。

I came across two problems as I looked into peer effects, though. One is that it’s not clear what to do about them. Let’s say there are two equilibria, one low-fertility and one high-fertility, and both are the result of peer effects. How would a government planner or a church or a nonprofit or anyone else flip a society from the low-fertility equilibrium to the high-fertility equilibrium?

不过在对同群效应的研究中，我遇到了两个问题。一是不太确定该如何对待这种效应。假设有两种平衡——低生育率和高生育率，都是同群效应的结果。那么政府规划者或教会或非营利组织或其他人该如何把社会从低生育率平衡切换到高生育率平衡呢?

Another problem is whether peer effects are real. Other explanations for high or low fertility are also plausible, after all. Maybe friends behave the same way because they’re alike, not because one influences the other. Or maybe they’re all influenced by some outside factor rather than each other. Dozens of such factors have been suggested: Working parents don’t get the support they need. Young people can’t afford a dwelling that’s big enough for children, or they’re saddled with student debt. The opportunity cost of having children is higher for people with higher education and better earnings prospects. Or maybe women simply can’t find suitable mates.

还有一个问题是同群效应是否真的存在。毕竟还有一些理论也能对生育率的高或低给出合理的解释。也许朋友之间有类似的行为是因为他们本来就是相似的人，并非对彼此有什么影响。还有许多类似的因素被提出来过：在工作的父母没有得到充分的支持。年轻人无力负担足够容纳孩子的居住空间，或被学生债所累。受教育程度越多，收入前景越好，要孩子的机会成本就越大。还有也许根本只是女性找不到合适的伴侣。

In studying peer effects, “The scope for spurious correlation in peer analysis is wide,” Joshua Angrist, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is also a Nobel laureate, warned in 2014 in an article in the journal Labour Economics titled “The Perils of Peer Effects.” Scholars who aren’t careful can get caught going around in circles. If there is a peer effect, the same women causing it are also being affected by it, making causality almost impossible to isolate. As Angrist put it, there needs to be “a clear separation between the subjects of a peer effects investigation and the peers who provide the mechanism for causal effects on these subjects.”

麻省理工学院经济学家、诺贝尔奖得主约书亚·安格里斯特在2014年发表在《劳动经济学》杂志上的论文《同群效应的危害》中警告，在研究该效应时，“同群分析中很容易出现假性相关。”学者们一不小心就有出现原地转圈的情况。如果存在同群效应，造成这种效应的女性同样也会受到这种效应的影响，这使得因与果几乎不可能区分开来。

 

词汇：

1.pronatalist

英/ prəʊˈneɪtəlɪst /美/ proʊˈneɪtəlɪst /

adj.鼓励人口出生率的;多生育主义者的

n.主张人口出生率的人;多生育主义者

2.sibling

英/ ˈsɪblɪŋ /美/ ˈsɪblɪŋ /

n.<正式>兄弟姐妹

3.laureate

英/ ˈlɒriət /美/ ˈlɔːriət /

n.荣誉获得者，获奖者;桂冠诗人(Poet Laureate 的简称)

adj.<文>(作为荣誉标志)佩戴桂冠的;<文>(花冠，花环)用月桂枝叶编织的;荣誉的

v.使戴桂冠;任命为桂冠诗人

4.equilibria

英/ ˌiːkwɪˈlɪbrɪə /美/ ˌiːkwɪˈlɪbriə; ˌekwɪˈlɪbriə /

n.平衡;均势

5.spurious

英/ ˈspjʊəriəs /美/ ˈspjʊriəs /

adj.(声明、论据等)站不住脚的，谬误的;虚假的，伪造的

      综上是“2024考研英语同源外刊5月:影响生育率的因素”，希望对备战2024考研考生们有所帮助!让我们乘风破浪，终抵彼岸，考研加油!

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