Some of the most prosperous nations in the world have experienced a pronounced drop in national savings rates-the per...
kensApril 13, 2020
why answer D
The reason why I didn't choose D was because the author did not necessarily "compare" the reasons behind savings in younger and older generation. It only suggests that older people save more and therefore the trend will continue. I still have hard time understanding. Thanks
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Thanks for the question! Let’s take a close look at what the passage is saying. We’re told that if the average age of nations’ populations continues to rise, the trend of saving less will continue. Why? Because older people have fewer reasons to save than younger people do.
Now (D) tells us that the argument takes into account only the comparative number of reasons older and younger people have for saving, and not the comparative strength of those reasons. This is exactly what happens. The conclusion of the argument is supported by one claim: that older people tend to have fewer reasons to save than younger people. This directly compares the number of reasons older and younger people have to save: older people have fewer reasons to save, and younger people have more reasons to save. This is a comparison of number of reasons.
What the passage doesn’t do, as you mentioned, is compare the reasons themselves. We don’t know what those reasons are. But this also supports (D), which tells us that the passage doesn’t compare the strength of the reasons. Without either making a direct claim as to how strong the reasons are versus others or telling us what the reasons are, the passage can’t compare the strength of those reasons. Older people might have fewer reasons to save, but better ones, for example, but this isn’t something the passage tells us, and so (D) is the correct answer.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any further questions that you might have.
