PrepTest 133, Section 1, Question 16
A survey of address changes filed with post(61 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(7 more words not shown)
- AWithin the past(14 more words not shown)
- BOver the past(21 more words not shown)
- CMany people moving(21 more words not shown)
- DMost adults moving(27 more words not shown)
- EMost people moving(30 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Twice as many households left. Did twice as many people leave?
A household might be one adult living alone or a family with several children. So even if the survey correctly counts households, translating that result into a count of people requires care. The census includes everyone, including children who aren't filing their own driver's-license changes.
There's another missing part of the population count: births and deaths. Moving isn't the only way people enter or leave the population. Plenty of babies could be born to families that never moved at all. Looking only at households arriving and departing could miss that growth.
What we’re looking for
To strengthen the prediction of a population decline, I'd like evidence that these missing factors don't cancel the apparent loss. A low birth rate or a high death rate could help. Information showing that the departing households contain more people than the arriving ones could also support the prediction. We need a better reason to move from the address changes to the total population.
Working the answers
- A
Some of the same people came and went. That doesn't tell us how many residents Weston gained or lost overall. It also doesn't settle the sizes of the arriving and departing households or what happened through births and deaths. Simply knowing that movement happened in both directions doesn't strengthen the predicted decline.
- B
We aren't told that the previous census showed a population loss. The evidence concerns address changes during the last decade, not the outcome of an earlier pair of censuses. Without knowing where the present situation fits the historical pattern, we can't use B to support this prediction.
- C
This works against the argument. If many arrivals weren't reported to either office, the survey could miss households entering Weston and exaggerate the apparent net departure. More people may have moved in than the address records suggest. That's a reason for less confidence in a decline.
- DCorrect
The departures largely involve parents with children, whereas adults staying or arriving are mostly older people living alone. That gives us reason to think the departures carry additional residents—the children—that a household count doesn't separately display.
D develops the household-versus-person concern rather than simply supplying the low birth rate we might have expected. Losing households that include children while gaining households of people living alone makes an actual population loss more plausible. We still don't have a complete census, but this is helpful evidence in the right direction.
- E
Career plans and established jobs don't tell us how many people are in the households. A young adult leaving for a career could leave alone or with a family. Someone with a long-standing job could also live alone or with others. The employment descriptions don't make the necessary connection to population size.
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