Michael: Marriage is increasingly a dying institution. Today, over 95% of Americans know someone who is divorced.

Jason: Your statistic doesn't mean that much. With up to 50% of marriages ending in divorce, nearly everyone in America either will be divorced or will know someone who is divorced in their lifetime

Which of the following assumptions is necessary to Jason’s argument?

A. There will always be some marriages that end in divorce.
B. The divorce rate has not become significantly higher in recent years, compared to the past.
C. Approximately 25% of Americans will be divorced at some point in their lives.
D. Michael’s statistics are, in fact, accurate.
E. Once someone has been divorced the first time, it becomes more likely that he or she will have a second divorce.


Question Source: Grockit.com
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can someone please explain in detail...

A. There will always be some marriages that end in divorce.
B. The divorce rate has not become significantly higher in recent years, compared to the past.
C. Approximately 25% of Americans will be divorced at some point in their lives.
D. Michael’s statistics are, in fact, accurate.
E. Once someone has been divorced the first time, it becomes more likely that he or she will have a second divorce.

If you have narrowed it down to A/ B you can ty to use the assumption negation technique.

Consider Jason's argument:
Jason: Your statistic doesn't mean that much. With up to 50% of marriages ending in divorce, nearly everyone in America either will be divorced or will know someone who is divorced in their lifetime.

Lets try statement A first:
There will always be some marriages that end in divorce. <-negation-> Some marriages NOT ALWAYS end in divorce. With this we have to find that the negated assumption attacks the argument or not, which in fact does not because there will still be some marriages which end up in divorce!


Statement B.
The divorce rate has not become significantly higher in recent years, compared to the past. <-negation-> The divorce rate HAS become significantly higher in recent years, compared to the past.
It means more and more people have been filing for divorce in recent years ,say if earlier 10 people used to file divorce, now the figure arose to 20.This clearly attacks the argument that 50% marriages always end up in divorce or people know some one who is divorced because now there will now be much larger percentage of divorcees than the previous figure of 50%.

I may be wrong but this is how i eliminated A. Hope my explanation helps.
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Interesting, in my defence all i can say is that jason made a statistical argument which is derived from past info."With up to 50% of marriages ending in divorce, nearly everyone in America either will be divorced or will know someone who is divorced in their lifetime."

As for your logic: If divorce stops this moment, there will be a point at which nearly everyone in America will not be divorced or will not know someone who is divorced.

There will always be some marriages that end in divorce.
Negation one:There will be no marriage that end in divorce.- i hope this is what u did.
negation two: Some marriages NOT ALWAYS end in divorce.-This was my way of negation.

You negation will hold true only if it were in future; at present it wont effect the argument in any way since, jason is merely quoting statistics based on past and is trying to impress them as if they will be true in present also, not the vice versa.

Well my defense is over, and people can make a new CR question out of this discussion also. May be some experts can shed light on this for better clarity.
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A Methodical approach to any CR Question

Type: Assumption

Step 1: Find the premise and the conclusion of the argument. Here it is Jason's. The premise is, Divorce is pervasive in America and the conclusion is either nearly everyone who has married has gone through divorce or knows someone who is divorced

Step 2: Negate each choice and select the choice that destroys the premise. A premise is destroyed by a choice when it provides an alternate explanation or reduces its force by providing additional information. So we are looking for something that counters the statement that divorce is pervasive in America

Negation of choice A: There will not be any marriage that ends in divorce. This choice is downright not ok as the negation contradicts the fact that divorces do happen. In other words Jason's original assumption cannot be a known fact. So let us reject this choice.

Negation of choice B: The divorce rate has become significantly higher in recent times compared to the past. This choice is strong because of the word "significantly" and it says that there are many marriages in the past that are still continuing and thus says something strongly to the effect that divorces in america are not pervasive. So let us keep this choice.

Negation of choice C: The percentage of Americans divorced will not be 25%. It may be greater or lesser. But the point is, this is based on current statistics. It doesn't consider what choice B considers which is marriages of the past i.e., it specifically doesn't say that marriages in the past were stable. So we can reject it as it cannot strongly imply anything to the effect that that divorces are not pervasive

Negation of choice D: Michael's statistics are not accurate. We can dismiss this as we are considering only Jason's argument and Jason doesn't base his argument on Michael's statistics.

Negation of choice E: It is not more likely that someone will have a second divorce. We can see that this doesn't strongly support the statement that divorces are not pervasive in America. Even if each is divorced only once divorce may be pervasive. So we can reject this choice.

The answer therefore is choice B.
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