Residents(居民) in the poorest areas in the U.S. face a life expectancy(平均寿命) up to decade shorter than those in the wealthiest areas, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Researchers from East Tennessee State University wanted to better understand how socioeconomic status was associated with health outcomes. To find out, they divided the country’s 3,141 areas into 50 new “states” (with 2 percent of the areas in each) based on household income rather than on geography.

The researchers broke down the data by county（郡，县） since they found state-level data may hide some “effect of socioeconomic differences on both the best-off and worst-off counties.” They then examined health data from the wealthiest and poorest “states” (top and bottom 2 percent) to see how residents differed on factors like smoking, clinical care and excessive(过多的) drinking. Researchers found that there was nearly a 10-year gap in the life expectancy of men with an average of 79.3 years in the wealthy counties compared to 69.8 years in the poorest. For women, the difference was slightly less：83 years in the wealthiest counties and 76 years in the poorest.

The study authors were cautious that while they found a connection between socioeconomic status and health outcomes, they did not analyze cause and effect. But they suggest that the data shows how policy makers should not just focus on state-wide initiatives (主动性) but more targeted efforts to help those most at risk. “With limited resources, methods of knowing the poorest areas exactly can be quite significant in the equal distribution (分配)of resources and programs to those communities that are in the greatest need,’’ the study authors wrote.

Figures published by the UK government in 2006 revealed that: 42% of marriages in the UK end in divorce: 24% of children grow up in single-parent families: the average number of children in a British family is 1.9. 【小题1】 Is it an endangered species?

With the average number of children in a British family falling beneath an average of 2.0, the population of the UK has been falling for quite a few years. The size of the British workforce is declining and the average age of the workforce is rising. 【小题2】

Why aren’t the British having as many children as they used to? 【小题3】 One of them is that British people are now having their children at a much older age than previously, meaning they have fewer years in which they can have children.

【小题4】 Well, houses are incredibly expensive in the UK, so many people are forced to stay with their parents early in their careers. And no one wants to start a new family when they are still living with their parents! So it’s not until people are about 30 years old that they can afford to move out, buy their own home, and then they can start to think about setting down and having children.

So what is Britain doing to try and save the British family? 【小题5】 There have been increases in Child Benefit money families can claim from the state. Also, there is an increasing amount of government subsidy (补贴) for nursery schools, so that parents do not need to pay so much for childcare. In addition. there are now laws allowing parents to take more time off work so that they can look after their children themselves rather than having to pay others to do it.

China has announced that couples will be permitted to have up to three children in a major policy shift from the existing two-child limit, after recent data showed a dramatic decline in births in China, the world’s most populated country.

“To actively respond to the ageing of the population…a couple can have three children,” state media Xinhua reported on Monday, citing a committee meeting hosted by President Xi Jinping.

Early this May, China reported the slowest population growth since the early 1960s, despite scrapping its one-child policy in 2015 to encourage more births and avoid a potential population crisis.

A once-a-decade survey showed that the overall population of China grew to 1,41178 billion in the 10 years to 2020, up by 5.38%. The increase reflects an average annual rise of 0.53%, down from 0.57% reported from 2000 to 2010.

The announcement drew a chilly response (遇冷) on Chinese social media, where many people said they could not afford to have even one or two children. “I am willing to have three children if you give me 5 million yuan (£554,350),” one user posted on Weibo. As a matter of fact, experiment of the three-child policy in Heilongjiang province in the last few years also resulted less effectively than expected.

It is not only China that is facing such a population challenge. Across east Asia, governments have, for years, been struggling to persuade couples to have more babies. South Korea and Japan both have used allowance (津贴) to encourage.

The policy change will come with “supportive measures, which will be beneficial to improving our country’s population structure, fulfilling the country’s strategy of actively coping with an ageing population and maintaining the advantage of human resources”, Xinhua said.