#26 - Specific Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[ToddVanV]

I chose C. Can you please explain how and why D is the Answer?

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Todd,

For these questions regarding the meaning of a phrase in context, look to how the phrase is used in the immediately surrounding parts of the passage. In this case, it's helpful to "back up" a few lines in the passage to the other usage of the phrase "quality of life." This part of the passage is the relevant excerpt:

" Similarly, with respect to the domestic spending argument, while debt- saddled nations might shift money away from programs designed to enhance quality of life, it is just as likely that they would shift the money from plans that, if implemented, would have a negative impact on the environment. For example, they might abandon plans to build new dams or roads, or eliminate subsidies that promote fertilizer or pesticide use. The extent, then, to which a nation’s quality of life is connected to the size of its international debt must be considered unknown."

In that excerpt, look at how quality of life is used the first time, in the first sentence. In that sentence, the author contrasts shifting money away from "quality of life" enhancing programs with shifting money away from plans that "would have a negative impact on the environment." Since the second part of that sentence is talking about issues having a negative effect on the environment, in the first part of the sentence the author must (by "quality of life") mean something that is having a positive effect on the environment. This strong association between quality of life and the environment is also present because, in the last sentence of that excerpt I quoted, the author is discussing the correlation between quality of life and size of international debt, and in the first part of the last paragraph the author discusses the same correlation between debt and deforestation (an environmental issue). Thus, the author clearly means us to associate quality of life with environmental issues.

That's why answer choice D, which brings up "environmental health," is the best answer here.