本期導讀
本文節選自《經濟學人》20201128期。如今，美國大部分地區要求八歲以下的兒童必須坐在安全座椅中，但這種對兒童安全的關心卻使得越來越少的家庭選擇「生三胎」。
Children’s car seats
Berth control
Child-safety laws may have surprising unintended consequences
IN THE EARLY 1970s American women gave birth, on average, to 2.12 children each. By 2018 that figure had fallen to 1.73. Many alterations in people’s lives have been invoked to help explain this change, including the facts that women now are better educated, more likely to have jobs or run businesses, and have better access to contraception than their antecedents of five decades ago. Also, demand for children to work as extra pairs of hands on family farms has dropped.
標題中的berth本意為「（船或火車等的）臥鋪，艙位，鋪位」，這裡可以理解為指「安全座椅」，同時在讀音上與「birth」同音，berth control 既表示「安全座椅的相關規定」，又表示「birth control」，可謂妙哉！unintended 意思是「非計劃的；無意的；無心的」，在這裡類似於unexpected其動詞原形為 intend，意思是「打算；計劃」give birth to...是個動詞短語，意思是「生孩子」，同時也可用作比喻義表示「孕育；產生；引起」：It was the study of history that gave birth to the social sciences. 對歷史的研究孕育了社會科學。alteration 指「改變，變化」，類似於change，其動詞為alterinvoke 意思是「提及，援引」contraception 指「避孕（法）；節育（法）」antecedent 意思是「 祖先；先人」，常用作複數，與ancestor 同義。
None of these explanations, though, overlaps neatly with birth-rate curves. Other factors must be at work, too. And Jordan Nickerson and David Solomon, professors of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College respectively, think they have found an intriguingly counterintuitive one: America’s increasingly protective child car-seat laws.
overlap 意思是「重疊」curve 指「曲線」，這句話直譯為「上述解釋並沒有與出生率曲線完美重疊」，也就是說上面的那些說法並不能完全解釋出生率的變化情況。be at work 表示「起作用」，這也與前一句話相照應，一定還有其他因素在起作用。intriguingly 指「非常有趣地」，形容詞是intriguing，動詞是intriguecounterintuitive 意思是「違反直覺的」，counter- 是個詞綴，意思是「逆；反對；相反；對立」；intuitive 指「直覺的」，其名詞是intuition（直覺）
Their study, 「Car seats as contraception」, published in SSRN, a repository for so-called preprint papers that have yet to undergo formal peer review, examines the effect that car-seat policies may have had on American birth rates between 1973 and 2017. During the Reagan era, only the truly wee—tots aged under three—had normally to be secured in child-safety seats. But states』 governments have, since then, gradually ramped up the requirements. Today, most places in America make children sit in safety seats until their eighth birthdays. That concern for youngsters』 safety has had the unintended consequence, Dr Nickerson and Dr Solomon suggest, of fewer three-child families.
repository 意思是「倉庫，存放處」，這裡是說SSRN是一種預印本資料庫。peer review 指「同行評議」，其目的是確定研究成果的真實性，重要性及原創性，從而把控期刊質量。wee 意思是「很小的」，比如a wee girltot 指「幼兒」ramp up 是個動詞搭配，意思是「使…的數量增加」
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