考研英语经济学人文章阅读训练三十六

Have the top0.1%of Americans made out like bandits since2000?

自2000年以来，美国最富有的0.1%的人像强盗一样地在积累财富？

Or have they merely stood still?

还是说只是维持不变？

It is a truth universally acknowledged that inequality in the rich world is high and rising.Or,at least,it used to be.A growing band of economists are challenging the received wisdom,pointing out that trends in the distribution of income and wealth may not be as bad as is often thought. Two recent studies focus on wealth inequality in America,providing further ammunition to the dissenters.

发达国家的社会不平等现象十分严重，并且仍在日益加剧，这已然是一个举世公认的事实。或者说，至少曾经如此。然而，越来越多的经济学家对人们普遍接受的观点提出了质疑，他们指出，收入与财富分配的趋势或许并非像人们通常认为的那样变得越来越糟糕。最近两项有关美国财富不平等的研究为持异议者提供了更多的论据。Measuring wealth is harder than it may seem.People are liable to under-report their asset holdings on official surveys,whereas it is hard to measure the true value of things like private companies and art works.

财富的衡量比想象中更加困难。在面对官方调查时，人们倾向于少报自己所拥有的资产额，而对于诸如私人公司和艺术品之类的东西，更是难以衡量其真正的价值。Economists are using increasingly sophisticated methods to get a sense of who owns what.One popular method is to examine income earned on investments,such as interest payments from bonds,assume a rate of return,then multiply up to calculate the value of the investment.

经济学家用以计算一个人拥有多少财富的方法也越来越复杂。广为流行的一种方法是计算其投资所得收益（例如债券的利息支出），即假定一个回报率，然后根据乘积来计算投资价值。

In a newly updated working paper Matthew Smith of the Treasury department,Owen Zidar of Princeton University and Eric Zwick of the University of Chicago use this method to gauge American wealth inequality.Previous estimates have relied on the assumption that all people receive the same rates of return on a given type of investment.

美国财政部的马修·史密斯、普林斯顿大学的欧文·齐达尔以及芝加哥大学的埃里克·兹威克在一份最新的研究报告中使用该方法来衡量美国的财富不平等程度。过去，人们往往假定所有人在某一特定类型的投资中所获得的回报率是相同的，并以此进行估算。

That may be misleading.The rich tend to plump for riskier investments, which command higher rates of return—implying,in turn,that the stock of wealth from which they derive that income is smaller than it would otherwise appear.

但这种方式或许具有误导性。富人往往倾向于选择风险更大、回报率更高的投资，这反过来又意味着，他们实际拥有的财富相比根据收益推算出的要少一些。

Allowing for different rates of return,the paper’s headline results suggest that America’s top0.1%own roughly15%of the country’s private wealth. Their share has risen since the1980s,but by less than other economists believe(some papers find that it has jumped to20%or more).And according to the new paper,that measure of wealth inequality has been stable since the middle of the2000s.

这份研究报告将回报率的差异性考虑在内，由此得出了重要结论，美国最富有的0.1%的人拥有着全国15%的私人财富。自上世纪80年代以来，这一比例一直呈上升趋势，但上升的幅度低于某些经济学家的预期（一些研究认为，这一比例已经激增至20%甚至更高水平）。据这项最新的研究显示，美国财富不平等程度自2005年以来一直保持在一个稳定的水平。

But does it make sense to count only private wealth?In another new working paper Sylvain Catherine,Max Miller and Natasha Sarin of the University of Pennsylvania argue that accrued entitlements to Social Security should also be included.Someone with access to a public pension is surely better off than someone without.

但仅计算私人财富是否有意义呢？宾夕法尼亚大学的西尔万·凯瑟琳、马克斯·米勒和娜塔莎·沙林在另一篇最新的研究报告中指出，社会保障所得权益也应该被计算在内。领取公共养老金的人肯定比未领取的人生活得更好。

Crucially,too,an expansion of Social Security means that poorer folk have less need to save for retirement.That distorts measures of wealth inequality which count only private nest-eggs.(Sweden,surprisingly enough,has very high private-wealth inequality,in part because of its cradle-to-grave welfare system.)

同样地，社会保障制度的发展减少了穷人攒钱养老的需求。因此，以个人储蓄衡量财富不平等并不准确。（令人惊讶的是，瑞典的私人财富不平等程度非常高，这在一定程度上是由于其“从摇篮到坟墓”的福利制度所致。）

In recent years the value of American Social Security wealth has jumped, in part because the population is ageing.It is also progressively distributed.Messrs Smith,Zidar and Zwick’s paper apportions this wealth between rich and poor.

近年来，美国社保的财富价值正在猛增，这在一定程度上是由于人口老龄化所致。越来越多的人能够享受到社保。在史密斯、齐达尔和兹威克的研究中，他们将富人和穷人享有社保的财富价值按比例进行计算。

As the chart shows,measured inequality falls,while the wealth share of the very richest has remained remarkably flat over the past two decades. America is a highly unequal society—but it is not becoming ever more so.如图所示，在这种计算方式下，美国的财富不平等程度实则有所下降，而最富有的那些人所拥有的财富份额在过去20年里明显保持在一个稳定的水平。美国确实是一个高度不平等的社会，但并没有变得愈发不平等。

(红色标注词为重难点词汇)

重难点词汇：

bandit[?b?nd?t]n.强盗；土匪

dissenter[d??sent?r]n.持异议者；反对者

sophisticated[s??f?st?ke?t?d]adj.复杂的；精致的

plump for选定；支持

apportion[??p??r?n]vt.分配；分摊