#10 - Household indebtedness, which some theorists regard as

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True-CE. The correct answer choice is (A)

The author begins by speculating that the recent recession was caused by household indebtedness, but quickly shows that such a hypothesis, if true, would lead to contradictory results. Therefore, there must have been an alternate cause for the recession. Answer choice (A) summarizes this conclusion quite well, and is therefore the correct answer.

The key to answering this question quickly and efficiently is to avoid getting distracted by the abundance of detail and focus instead on the key words that point to the conclusion. The language of the first sentence in the stimulus prefigures a conclusion that is the direct opposite of what "some theorists regard" as the cause of the recent recession. Also, the word "admittedly" in the beginning of the second sentence indicates that the author is exploring a hypothesis that will ultimately be rejected, and is thus irrelevant to understanding the main point of the argument.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. See discussion above.

Answer choice (B): It is unclear whether low-income households succeeded in paying off their debts: we can draw no such inference from the facts provided in the stimulus. If anything, since money is not lent to those without assets, low-income households may not have had much debt to pay off after all. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (C): If, as a matter of fact, affluent people owed most of the household debt, it is unclear why they would have increased their spending during the recession. Rational people would have done exactly the opposite. There is no information in the stimulus that can lead to such a conclusion.

Answer choice (D): The author only concludes that household indebtedness had little impact on the recession, not on the economy in general. Having a solid grasp of the precise nature and scope of the conclusion is key to avoiding such exaggerated answers.

Answer choice (E): What people did prior to the recent recession is immaterial to this argument. This answer choice is incorrect.

[avengingangel]

Is the conclusion the last sentence in the stimulus? And the question stem is just asking you to describe it, in slightly different terms ??

(For my own future reference: 3-118, #19)

[Adam Tyson]

Spot on, Angel! This Main Point question is asking you to identify the conclusion, and it is in the last sentence in this case. Most Main Point questions are not so friendly as that, and you are more likely to find the conclusion earlier in the stimulus, maybe at the very beginning or perhaps buried in the middle somewhere. They are usually easy to spot at the end, like this one was, and for that reason our test authors don't often place it there. Nevertheless, sometimes they toss us a softball, and we get to hit it out of the park.

Good work!

[adlindsey]

Also, the word "admittedly" in the beginning of the second sentence indicates that the author is exploring a hypothesis that will ultimately be rejected, and is thus irrelevant to understanding the main point of the argument.

What would be the hypothesis that will be rejected? Is it that household indebtedness didn't cause the recession? I just don't understand this 2nd sentence, as to the comparison between the affluent and low income households, and how that leads to the conclusion.

[Claire Horan]

The hypothesis that will ultimately be rejected is that high household indebtedness caused the recession. This is in the first sentence: "Household indebtedness, which some theorists regard as causing recession, was high proceeding the recent recession, but..." The speaker finds that hypothesis unlikely because there was both high indebtedness and high assets, which wouldn't cause a recession. The second sentence explains a possible way that this paradox could be explained (if low-income households had the high debt, while high-income households had the high assets). The stimulus goes on to point out that this was not the case, that the high-income households had high debt.

[jessicamorehead]

I got the correct answer, but I saw this questions as conditional rather than casual. I wrote the following:

most assets owned by affluent
AND high household debt could have caused recession
most debt owned by low income


then the contrapositive of that is as follows:

high household debt did NOT cause the recession most assests NOT owned by affluent
OR
most debt NOT owned by low income

then based on the last portion of the stimulus, I concluded from the contrapositive that answer A was correct.


I am realizing I completely missed the causal argument here and by doing so, used a mistaken reversal of the contrapositive to justify answer choice A. How do I recognize that this is a causal argument and not a conditional one?

[nicholaspavic]

Hi jessica,

The words "cause" is used twice in the stimulus and then again in the correct answer. Consider reviewing the "Causal Indicators" list in our materials. That word list is immensely helpful if you commit it to memory and train your brain to immediately recognize in in stimuli. Also, review PowerScore's "How to Attack a Causal Conclusion." If you do both of those, that may help you start to quickly identify arguments involving causality. Don't be overly concerned with you mistake in conditional reason (it happens to all of us).

Thanks for the great question!