Instead of producing goods or services-the traditional economic model “products"-older persons may contribute a “product" that has value to society, such as caring for children,caring for other older persons,caring for the oldest old, providing community leadership,mentoring or being an effective role model.But in spite of their significant human and economic benefits,such contributions have not been figured into an economy's gross national product.And they have not been appropriately valued.
Over the past several decades, most industrialized countries have experienced a substantial drop in the average age at which individuals retire from the labour market.Longer life expectancy and better health have not been accompanied by longer working lives.As a consequence,these countries are facing serious concerns about the viability of social security systems.A key challenge for these countries is to mitigate the effects of a drop in the working age
population by increasing and prolonging the participation of older people in the labour market.
Social protection is a basic component of decent work.The objective of most social protection schemes is to provide access to health care and income security. But today more than half the world's population is excluded from any type of social security protection.
In most developing countries,no more than 20 per cent-and sometimes as few as 5 per cent-of older persons can expect to receive a pension or adequate health care.People working in the informal economy,predominantly women,are likely to have very low or no income in old age.
For older persons,the main expenditure tends to be on health.Health care is an essential part of social protection in any society, and as the global population ages,it is essential that health services adapt to new demands.Even in countries where the family takes on the responsibility of caring for frail older people,global pressures and trends suggest that the elderly will increasingly be forced to rely on themselves,as younger people move from rural to urban areas for economic reasons.
A growing sector of the population that will certainly require care is the oldest old, those 80 years of age or older. Some have developed strategies for caring for themselves and for each other,and are thus able to receive and give care and support,to remain independent and to have control over their own lives. But the percentage of the oldest old is growing very rapidly,and there is an urgent need,particularly in developing countries,to expand care and security networks.

A.serve as role models for their grandchildren only

B.usually use raw materials to produce goods for the market

C.make contributions to an economy's gross national product

D.have values which are neglected by the society to some extent

A.Longer life expectancy means longer working lives

B.Older people are willing to prolong their working lives

C.People retire from the labor market much earlier than they used to

D.Older people have no choice but to participate in the labor market

A.receive a pension

B.receive heath care

C.have steady income

D.have no social protection

A.ensures income security of the elderly

B.provides protection for the elderly only

C.is the most important part of social protection

D.defines the family's duty of caring for the elderly

A.Most older people can take care of themselves

B.It is essential that social protection meet new requirements

C.Older people have been a heavy burden for the whole society

D.It is urgent for younger people to provide finance for the elderly

In life,once on a path,we tend to follow it,for better or worse.What's sad is that even if it's the latter,we often accept it anyway because we are so accustomed to the way things are that we don't even recognize that they could be different.This is a phenomenon psychologists call functional fixedness.
This classic experiment will give you an idea of how it works and a sense of whether you may have fallen into the same trap:People are given a box of tacks and some matches and asked to find a way to attach acandle to a wall so that it burns properly. Typically,the subjects try tacking the candle tothe wall or lighting it to affix it with melted wax.The psychologists had,of course, arranged it so that neither of these obvious approaches would work.The tacks are too short,and the paraffin doesn't bind to the wall.So how can you accomplish the task? The successful technique is to use the tack box as a candle-holder.You empty it,tack it to the wall,and stand the candle inside it.To think of that,you have to look beyond the box's usual role as a receptacle just for tacks and re-imagine it serving an entirely new purpose.That is difficult because we all suffer to one degree or another from functional fixedness.The inability to think in new ways affects people in every comer of society.
The political theorist Hannah Arendt coined the phrase frozen thoughts to describe deeply held ideas that we no longer question but should. InArendt's eyes,the complacent reliance on such accepted "truths"also made people blind to ideas that didn't fit their worldview,even when there was ample evidence for them. Frozen thinking has nothing to do with intelligence,she said."It can be found in highly intelligent people."Arendt was particularly interested in the origins of evil, and she considered critical thinking to be a moral imperative-in its absence,a society could go the way of Nazi Germany.
Fortunately,psychologists have found that anyone can unfreeze his or her thinking.One of the most effective ways is to introduce a little discord to one's intellectual interactions.What this all means is that, as difficult as it can sometimes be,talking to people who disagree with you is good for your brain.So if you hate conspiracy theories and run into someone who believes that wefaked the moon landing,don't walk away.Have tea with him or her.It can broaden your thinking in countless ways.

A.we always follow the worse path in life

B.it is essential for us to lead a different kind of life

C.it is difficult for us to adapt to something different

D.we seldom make changes to the ways that things are

A.the paraffin can attach the candle to the wall

B.functional fixedness leads to the failure of some subjects

C.psychologists hope that the subjects stick to functional fixedness

D.tacking the candle to the wall is the only way to complete the task

A.container

B.support

C.stand

D.omament

A.One can get rid of frozen thinking if he is wise and rational

B.We should be capable of questioning every idea in our minds

C.Some ideas are so deeply held in our minds that we never question them

D.Critical thinking is quite often developed among highaly intelligent people

A.We should make friends with those who agree with us

B.We should walk away from people who hate interactions

C.We should listen to different ideas in order to think creatively

D.We should have tea with someone who believes in conspiracy theories

For expat parents,passing on their native languages can be a struggle.Not sharing your first language with loved ones is hard.Not passing it on to your own child can be especially tough.Many expat and immigrant parents feel a sense of failure;they wring their hands and share stories on parenting forums and social media,hoping to find the secret to nurturing bilingual children successfully.
Children are linguistic sponges,but this doesn't mean that cursory exposure is enough.They must hear a language quite a bit to understand it-and use it often to be able to speak it comfortably.This is mental work,and a child who doesn't have a motive to speak a language either a need or a strong desire-will often avoid it. Children's brains are already busy enough.
So languages often wither and die when parents move abroad.Consider America.The foreign-born share of the population is 13.7%,and has never been lower than 4.7%(in 1970).And yet foreign language speakers don't accumulate: today just 25% of the population speaks another language.That's because, typically,the first generation born in America is bilingual,and the second is monolingual-in English,the children often struggling to speak easily with their immigrant grandparents.
In the past,governments discouraged immigrant families from keeping their languages.Teddy Roosevelt worried that America would become a "polyglot boarding-house".These days,officials tend to be less interventionist;some even see a valuable resource in immigrants' language abilities.Yet many factors conspire to ensure that children still lose their parents' languages,or never learn them.
A big one is institutional pressure.A child's time spent with a second language is time not spent on their first.So teachers often discourage parents from speaking their languages to their children.(This is especially true if the second language lacks prestige.)Parents often reluctantly comply,worried about their offspring's education.This is a shame;children really can master two languages or even more.Research does indeed suggest their vocabulary in each language may be somewhat smaller for a while.But other studies hint at cognitive advantages among bilinguals.They may be more adept at complex tasks,better at maintaining attention,and (at the other end of life)suffer the onset of dementia later.
Languages are an intimate part of identity; it is wrenching to try and fail to pass them on to a child.Success may be a question of remembering that they are not just another thing to be drilled into a young mind,but a mnatter of the heart.

A.they are not well accepted by their children

B.they are not experienced in bringing up children

C.it is illegal to post information on parenting forums

D.it is hard to pass on their native languages to children

A.children are too busy to learn a language

B.children can pick up a language very quickly

C.children have strong desire to speak a language

D.children don't have a motive to acquire a language

A.to lose vigor

B.to dry up

C.to be indifferent

D.to become energetic

A.Some American officials come to realize the values of immigrantlanguages

B.Immigrant parents think their native languages have no worth in labor market

C.Children are reluctant to learnimmigrant languages because they lack prestige

D.American government has prevented immigrants to use their native languages in public

A.bilinguals enjoy cognitive advantages

B.language can tie up parents and children

C.language identifies the symbol of intimacy

D.acquisition of a language is beneficial for health

Recent scandals show that limiting ad partners' access to your data isn't enough to protect it. Facebook Inc.,which turned 15 on Feb.4,spent the past year peppering you with apologias and promises about protecting your personal data from others.The company wants you to know that it doesn't sell your data to advertisers, per se, and that you can limit data sharing with some other apps. It's going to keep paying for pop-up kiosks and subway ads to reinforce that the thickets of data growing in its garden now are(imagine!)under your control. But Facebook still isn't being transparent about the ways it collects information on you,and it's quietly stepping up efforts to grab lots more.The company's knowledge goes far beyond status updates. It tracks people across the Internet on other companies'websites and apps.It uses IP addresses totarget ads to people who turned off location-based tracking on their phones.It's been caught collecting call and text histories from users' Android devices.It's stored facial data from people who never agreed to biometric scans. It was just caught monitoring the phone activity of some kids as young as 13.
On Feb.7,Germany's antitrust regulator was expected to announce the results of a three-year investigation into whether the company has illegally used its market power to coerce data sharing consent. No wonder Facebook wants to have a different discussion about privacy.From his Senate testimony last year to a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month,Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has stressed that Facebook isn't selling user data.
In privacy terms,this is a largely semantic distinction. Facebook does sell clients your attention,tailoring ads to what your online behavior suggests you might like. The less data the company shares due to privacy concemns or anything else-the more it can charge for exclusive access to its 2.7 billion global users.
Europe is a step ahead:Under the General Data Protection Regulation enacted last year,Facebook has to more clearly disclose what data it's gathering and why when requesting that users click OK. Irish authorities already have seven investigations open on Facebook's tactics.If the company is in violation,it could be fined a maximum of 4 per cent of its global revenue.Of course,it's difficult to imagine any regulator conjuring a fine big enough to upend the data hungry business model of a company that made S21.7 billion in profit last year.And as long as Facebook is unwilling to limit its collection practices,we'll all have little choice in what we share.

A.Facebook admitted selling its users' data to advertisers

B.Facebook made promises to protect its users' personal data

C.Facebook made an apology for failing in protecting its users

D.Facebook was trustworthy because it didn't disclose its users'data

A.updates its status to keep data safe

B.collects its users' information secretly

C.tracks people in public in an illegal way

D.makes the public know about how it collects data

A.to force

B.to claim

C.to require

D.to threat

A.there are different interpretations for privacy

B.Facebook traces its users'online behavior

C.there are various ways to access its users'data

D.Facebook ensures the safety of its users'information

A.Facebook will be under the control of Irish authorities

B.Facebook will be involved in a lawsuit because of its practices

C.Facebook will pay 4 per cent of its global revenue for penalty

D.Facebook will go through a tough time in the following years

Not change for change's sake,but change to preserve America's ideals-life, liberty,and the pursuit of happiness.Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeless.
Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American. On behalf of our nation,I salute my predecessor,President Bush,for his half-century of service to America.
And I thank the millions of men and women whose steadfastness and sacrifice triumphed over depression and fascism.
Today,a generation raised in the shadows of the Cold War assumes new responsibilities in a world warmed by the sunshine of freedom but threatened still by ancient hatreds and new plagues.
Raised in unrivaled prosperity,we inherit an economy that is still the world's strongest,but is weakened by business failures,stagnant wages,increasing inequality,and deep divisions among our people.
When George Washington first took the oath I have just swom to uphold, news traveled slowly across the land by horseback and across the ocean by boat. Now,the sights and sounds of this ceremony are broadcast instantaneously to billions around the world.
Communications and commerce are global;investment is mobile;technology is almost magical;and ambition for a better life is now universal.We earn our livelihood in peaceful competition with people all across the earth.Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world,and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.
This new world has already enriched the lives of millions of Americans who are able to compete and win in it.But when most people are working harder for less;when others cannot work at all;when the cost of health care devastates families and threatens to bankrupt many of our enterprises,great and small;when fear of crime robs law-abiding citizens of their freedom; and when millions of poor children cannot even imnagine the lives we are calling them to lead-we have not made change our friend.
We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps.But we have not done so.Instead,we have drifted,and that drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy,and shaken our confidence.
Though our challenges are fearsome,so are our strengths.And Americans have ever been a restless,questing,hopeful people.We must bring to our task today the vision and will of those who came before us.