高中英语 精华双语文章 人口老龄化素材.docVIP

高中精华双语文章：人口老龄化 我们不得不承认我们的社会面临着越来越严峻的人口老龄化问题，人口增长率接近于零的社会离我们越来越近。经验而论是长寿改变着我们的社会，但事实上是先进社会的低出生率改变着社会的年龄构成。 Aging Population 人口老龄化 We have to realise how old, how very old, we are. Nations are classified as aged when they have 7 per cent or more of their people aged 65 or above, and by about 1970 every one of the advanced countries had become like this. Of the really ancient societies, with over 13 per cent above 65, all are in Northwestern Europe. At the beginning of the 1980s East Germany had 15.6 per cent, Austria, Sweden, West Germany and France had 13.4 per cent or above, and England and Wales 13.3 per cent. Scotland had 12.3 per cent. Northern Ireland 10.8 percent and the United States 9.9 per cent. We know that we are getting even older, and that the nearer a society approximates to zero population growth, the older its population is likely to be - at least, for any future that concerns us now. 我们不得不认识到我们多大岁数了，有多老了。当有7％或更多的65岁或65岁以上的人时，这些国家就被列为老龄化国家。到大约1970年，每一个发达国家就成了这样的国家。65岁以上的人超过13％的真正的老年人社会，都在西北欧。20世纪80年代初，东德有15.6％的人超过65岁，在奥地利、瑞典、西德和法国，这个比率为13.4%或更高，英格兰和威尔士有13.3%，苏格兰有12.3%，北爱尔兰有10.8％，美国有9.9%。我们知道人类在日益变老，人口增长率接近于零的社会离我们越近，人口越可能呈老龄化的趋势，至少就与影响我们的未来来说是这样的。 To these now familiar facts a number of further facts may be added, some of them only recently recognised. There is the apparent paradox that the effective cause of the high proportion of the old is births rather than deaths. There is the economic principle that the dependency ratio - the degree to which those who cannot earn depend for a living on those who can - is more advantageous in older societies like ours than in the younger societies of the developing world, because lots of dependent babies are more of a liability than numbers of the inactive aged. There is the appreciation of the salient historical truth that the aging or advanced societies has been a sudden change. 更多的现实，这其中有些只是近来才认识到，可能会加入到这些熟悉的现实中。有这样一个明显的似是而非的论点：造成老年人比率高的实际原因是出生人数而不是死亡人数。有一条经济原则：抚养率――不能自食其力的人依靠能挣钱养家的人的程度――在我们这样的更为老龄化的社会里比在发展中