Economist: If the economy grows stronger, employment will increase, and hence more parents will need to find day care for their young children. Unfortunately, in a stronger economy many day-care workers will quit to take better-paying jobs in other fields. Therefore, a stronger economy is likely to make it much more difficult to find day care.
Which one of the following is an assumption the economist's argument requires?
Question Type: Assumption
Premise 1: If the economy grows stronger, employment will increase, and hence more parents will need to find day care for their young children
Premise 2: In a stronger economy many day-care workers will quit to take better-paying jobs in other fields
Conclusion: Therefore, a stronger economy is likely to make it much more difficult to find day care.
Argument Analysis:
Stronger Economy-----> employment increase-----> more parents need to find day care for their children
Stronger Economy-------> day care workers will find better paying jobs in other fields
Stronger Economy------->_________________-------->make it much more difficult to find day care
We need to fill the blank with a possible cause that will make finding a day care difficult.
The probable reasons can be No new recruitment in day care facilities, shortage of employees with requisite day care skills, lesser pay in day care compared to other fields or day care is not a profitable business in a stronger economy for some valid reason, which we don't know.
(A) If the economy grows stronger, most of the new jobs that are created will be in fields that pay well.
- Incorrect, doesn't lead to the conclusion.
(B) If the economy grows stronger, the number of new day-care workers will not be significantly greater than the number of day-care workers who move to better-paying
jobs in other fields.
- Correct. Since it says that there is a shortage of new day care workers compared to the requirement of day care workers to handle the increased demand for day care. We can reverse the answer choice & check that it weakens the conclusion, as the answer will mean surplus of day care workers.
(C) If the economy grows stronger, the number of workers employed by day-care centers is likely to decrease.
Incorrect, although it is a very close, we do not know whether the decrease could mean that day care centers will restrict the # of children they can handle, making availability of day cares difficult to find. It could also mean, day care workers were in excess & they are now being optimized by day care centers. In any case i would choose this choice on Exam day, sicne the prompt doesn't mention"day care centers".
(D) The shortage of day care for children is unlikely to worsen unless employment increases and many day-care center employees quit to take better-paying jobs in other
fields.
- IMO this is already stated in the argument & hence cannot be an assumption. As an assumption is not explicitly stated in the argument but is necessary for the argument to be valid.
(E) The total number of young children in day-care centers will decrease if the cost of day care increases significantly.
- Out of scope
Answer B.
Thanks,
GyM
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Updated on: 03 Sep 2019, 17:24
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