CAT Exam  >  CAT Questions  >  Read the passage carefully and answer the fol... Start Learning for Free
Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:
For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.
But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.
This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.
In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.
There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.
Q. The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?
  • a)
    In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.
  • b)
    Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.
  • c)
    The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.
  • d)
    People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.
Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer?
Verified Answer
Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thou...
"In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility"
Option A is a distortion. Though the author says that higher fertility rates and work-focused attitudes are associated, he does not say that one leads to the other. The option also turns the speculation done by the author into a rigid argument. Hence Option A can be eliminated
In the second paragraph, the author discusses how both Progressives and Conservatives promote greater labour-force participation. And in the last line of the same paragraph, the author opines that "From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life." Hence, the author is likely to agree with option B.
The author does not say that the relationship between the value placed on work and the attention given to family has another factor which is the country a person lives in. He merely alludes to a trend that is generally seen in developed and under-developed countries, a strict relation cannot be derived. Hence Option C is a distortion.
Option D is a distortion. Deriving less value from work does not necessarily mean that a person will be able to spend more time with their family. This is the case in poor countries, where people generally do not place a high value on work, but have to work to support material needs. Hence Option D can be eliminated.
View all questions of this test
Most Upvoted Answer
Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thou...
Explanation:
b) Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum:
- The author agrees with the statement that efforts to support family life are in conflict with the labor policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.
- The passage highlights how public policy in the United States, influenced by both progressives and conservatives, promotes greater labor-force participation while neglecting the importance of family life.
- Progressives focus on providing benefits like paid leave and public childcare to support working parents, while conservatives emphasize reducing "welfare dependency" and structuring the social safety net to encourage work.
- The author argues that these policies, although promoted as family-friendly, actually push individuals to prioritize work over family, leading to negative consequences for family life.
- The passage suggests that the societal emphasis on work over family is prevalent in highly developed countries, where work is valued for meaning and social prestige, often at the expense of family time and attention.
- Policies that route benefits through employment or favor working parents may inadvertently disadvantage non-working parents, creating a system that does not equally support all family models.
- Therefore, the author would agree that there is a conflict between efforts to promote family life and the labor policies that prioritize work above all else.
Attention CAT Students!
To make sure you are not studying endlessly, EduRev has designed CAT study material, with Structured Courses, Videos, & Test Series. Plus get personalized analysis, doubt solving and improvement plans to achieve a great score in CAT.
Explore Courses for CAT exam

Similar CAT Doubts

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The central idea of the passage is that

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.Which of the following is the primary characteristic of Netflixs The One because of which it has been cited in the passage?

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.Which of the following is NOT a problem associated with developed societies placing a high value on work?

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:Over the last decade, an increasingly confident right wing has presented disillusioned voters with a simple choice: elitist, neoliberal hyper-globalisation or popular, patriotic nationalism. This new fault-line pits economic and social liberalism against social conservatism and the promise of muscular economic intervention. Despite the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020, progressives have yet to find a strategy to combat this potent—if false—divide.The traditional right-left dividing line—economic liberalism and social conservatism on the right, economic interventionism and social liberalism on the left—forced working-class nationalists to choose between their socially conservative instincts (including hostility to immigration) and their support for state intervention in the economy. In essence, they had to decide which liberalism—social or economic—to reject.The 2016 Brexit referendum freed such voters from this restraint—and it certainly set back the old liberal order. But despite many jumping to the conclusion that fervent nationalism explained the whole Brexit phenomenon, it was not clear which liberalism was being rejected. Many of the towns that repudiated the EU were voting just as much against the deindustrialisation that took place during the years Britain was in the EU as they were voting to restore a supposedly Edenic 1950s. Back in the conventional world of parliamentary elections, in 2017 Labour’s anti-neoliberal economic programme under Jeremy Corbyn added 3.5m votes to its 2015 general election tally. But by 2019, identity trumped economics—on which the Tories, Labours opponents, had anyway begun to change their tune under Boris Johnson—and the red wall crumbled.The British right was not alone in affecting to spurn both liberalisms. From Warsaw via Workington to Wisconsin, working-class voters received promises from right-wing populists that their economic interests would not be sacrificed on the altar of neoliberalism. Poland’s Law and Justice Party adopted an economic and social programme that would win over “left-behind” Poles. Marine Le Pen’s National Front professed to abandon its fascist past and moved the spotlight onto protecting French industry. Johnson committed his party to an interventionist “levelling-up” agenda. And Trump promised industrial protection against overseas competition, as well as the biggest programme of public works since the New Deal.This new fault-line not only redrew the political map: it fractured the old consensus around core democratic values—stretching from right to left—that had existed since the Second World War. These values were rooted in the French Revolution and European Enlightenment and comprised an alliance of liberty, equality and solidarity, which could accommodate Christian Democrats, liberals, social democrats and orthodox socialists, albeit in different proportions.The nationalist far-right rejects these values. Echoing the rhetorical tropes of anti-democratic forces from the interwar years, populists like Trump promote conspiracy theories in which liberal politicians plot to destroy national sovereignty in the interests of global financial capital. A politics of demonisation, exclusion and “othering” has seeped into mainstream right-wing parties. In the United States, it culminated in Trump’s incitement of his supporters to storm the Capitol on 6th January to overturn the result of the 2020 election.In a recent essay, Timothy Garton Ash argues that “liberals need to join both conservatives and socialists in full-heartedly embracing the value of solidarity.” But for intellectual conservatives like the late Roger Scruton (whom Garton Ash quotes) as well as chauvinist politicians—like Trump, Le Pen, Viktor Orbán and the Italian League’s Matteo Salvini—solidarity always has to rely on an inherently exclusionary notion of identity: we’re who we are because you’re not. Progressive social solidarity is, by contrast, accepting of difference. However, socialists and liberals have much in common in the battle against the far right: together, they can build on the social gains of the Harold Wilson and Tony Blair governments, allying around social and political liberty as well as the economics of equality.Which of the following statements is definitely TRUE according to the passage?

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:Over the last decade, an increasingly confident right wing has presented disillusioned voters with a simple choice: elitist, neoliberal hyper-globalisation or popular, patriotic nationalism. This new fault-line pits economic and social liberalism against social conservatism and the promise of muscular economic intervention. Despite the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020, progressives have yet to find a strategy to combat this potent—if false—divide.The traditional right-left dividing line—economic liberalism and social conservatism on the right, economic interventionism and social liberalism on the left—forced working-class nationalists to choose between their socially conservative instincts (including hostility to immigration) and their support for state intervention in the economy. In essence, they had to decide which liberalism—social or economic—to reject.The 2016 Brexit referendum freed such voters from this restraint—and it certainly set back the old liberal order. But despite many jumping to the conclusion that fervent nationalism explained the whole Brexit phenomenon, it was not clear which liberalism was being rejected. Many of the towns that repudiated the EU were voting just as much against the deindustrialisation that took place during the years Britain was in the EU as they were voting to restore a supposedly Edenic 1950s. Back in the conventional world of parliamentary elections, in 2017 Labour’s anti-neoliberal economic programme under Jeremy Corbyn added 3.5m votes to its 2015 general election tally. But by 2019, identity trumped economics—on which the Tories, Labours opponents, had anyway begun to change their tune under Boris Johnson—and the red wall crumbled.The British right was not alone in affecting to spurn both liberalisms. From Warsaw via Workington to Wisconsin, working-class voters received promises from right-wing populists that their economic interests would not be sacrificed on the altar of neoliberalism. Poland’s Law and Justice Party adopted an economic and social programme that would win over “left-behind” Poles. Marine Le Pen’s National Front professed to abandon its fascist past and moved the spotlight onto protecting French industry. Johnson committed his party to an interventionist “levelling-up” agenda. And Trump promised industrial protection against overseas competition, as well as the biggest programme of public works since the New Deal.This new fault-line not only redrew the political map: it fractured the old consensus around core democratic values—stretching from right to left—that had existed since the Second World War. These values were rooted in the French Revolution and European Enlightenment and comprised an alliance of liberty, equality and solidarity, which could accommodate Christian Democrats, liberals, social democrats and orthodox socialists, albeit in different proportions.The nationalist far-right rejects these values. Echoing the rhetorical tropes of anti-democratic forces from the interwar years, populists like Trump promote conspiracy theories in which liberal politicians plot to destroy national sovereignty in the interests of global financial capital. A politics of demonisation, exclusion and “othering” has seeped into mainstream right-wing parties. In the United States, it culminated in Trump’s incitement of his supporters to storm the Capitol on 6th January to overturn the result of the 2020 election.In a recent essay, Timothy Garton Ash argues that “liberals need to join both conservatives and socialists in full-heartedly embracing the value of solidarity.” But for intellectual conservatives like the late Roger Scruton (whom Garton Ash quotes) as well as chauvinist politicians—like Trump, Le Pen, Viktor Orbán and the Italian League’s Matteo Salvini—solidarity always has to rely on an inherently exclusionary notion of identity: we’re who we are because you’re not. Progressive social solidarity is, by contrast, accepting of difference. However, socialists and liberals have much in common in the battle against the far right: together, they can build on the social gains of the Harold Wilson and Tony Blair governments, allying around social and political liberty as well as the economics of equality.Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

Top Courses for CAT

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer?
Question Description
Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer? for CAT 2024 is part of CAT preparation. The Question and answers have been prepared according to the CAT exam syllabus. Information about Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer? covers all topics & solutions for CAT 2024 Exam. Find important definitions, questions, meanings, examples, exercises and tests below for Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer?.
Solutions for Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer? in English & in Hindi are available as part of our courses for CAT. Download more important topics, notes, lectures and mock test series for CAT Exam by signing up for free.
Here you can find the meaning of Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer? defined & explained in the simplest way possible. Besides giving the explanation of Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer?, a detailed solution for Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer? has been provided alongside types of Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer? theory, EduRev gives you an ample number of questions to practice Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.Q.The author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?a)In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, focusing more on work leads to increased fertility rates.b)Efforts to support family life are at odds with the labour policies advocated by both ends of the political spectrum.c)The relationship between the value placed on work and the attention paid to the family by a person depends on how developed his country is.d)People who do not place a high value on work are able to give more time and attention to their families.Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer? tests, examples and also practice CAT tests.
Explore Courses for CAT exam

Top Courses for CAT

Explore Courses
Signup for Free!
Signup to see your scores go up within 7 days! Learn & Practice with 1000+ FREE Notes, Videos & Tests.
10M+ students study on EduRev