PrepTest 129, Section 1, Question 5
An analysis of the number and severity of(41 more words not shown)
Each of the following, if(15 more words not shown)
- APeople who have(10 more words not shown)
- BAlthough most people(21 more words not shown)
- CThe quality of(16 more words not shown)
- DChanges in one's(10 more words not shown)
- EPeople in good(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Both groups are elderly. The difference is how long they have lived in this community.
The lifelong residents have worse health than the people who moved in within the past five years. Why might that happen? Perhaps being healthy makes a move easier. Someone who is seriously ill might be less able to organize and undertake a move, so the newcomers could already have been healthier. Or perhaps having the means to relocate goes along with better health and better access to care.
Those are possible explanations, not conclusions the passage has established. The passage itself only reports the difference. We could also explain it by showing something harmful about living in this community for a long time, or something beneficial about changing environments.
What we’re looking for
The question asks for the exception: four choices contribute to explaining the difference, and one doesn't. Keep checking the particular comparison. We need a reason why elderly newcomers are healthier than elderly lifelong residents.
Working the answers
- A
This supplies the financial-means possibility we considered. If the people able to relocate tend to have better-than-average health, that helps explain why the group of newcomers is healthier. The difference could reflect who can move, rather than a health benefit caused by moving. Since it contributes to an explanation, A isn't the exception.
- BCorrect
The analysis already restricts both groups to elderly people. Even if most newcomers to the community are young, those young newcomers aren't the people being compared here. Saying that most lifelong residents are elderly doesn't explain why elderly lifelong residents have worse health than elderly recent arrivals. B changes the population under discussion instead of explaining the observed difference.
- C
Lifelong residents have spent their lives in a community with relatively poor health care. Recent arrivals may have spent most of their lives elsewhere, with better care. Although both groups now have access to the same local system, their past exposure to that system is very different. That helps explain why the newcomers could arrive in better health.
- D
This gives moving itself a possible benefit. Recent arrivals have undergone an environmental change that lifelong residents haven't. If that kind of change tends to improve health, it helps explain the healthier newcomers.
- E
This supports the other possibility from our reading: healthier people are more likely to move. We would therefore expect recent arrivals to include a greater share of healthy people, while poor health could keep other people where they already live. It explains the pattern by the selection of people into the two groups.
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