ACCORDING TO PARAGRAPH 5, IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, THE NUMBER OF...

27. According to paragraph 5, in the American Civil War, the number of the dead was __________. A. very few compared to other American wars B. the greatest ever experienced In American history C. equal to all of the other wars of American history D. greater than all of the wars of history combined III. Read the text and follow the instructions. (13 points)

Marriage works -

and it's the answer to the misery of loneliness

A.

This week the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed that more of us than ever are living alone. This won’t trouble the author Colm Toibin, who once eulogised the freedom that living alone gives him, likening his solitary existence to that of ‘a cloistered nun’. This is a terrifying image, surely, and not a metaphor for a life most of us would seek to inhabit. Certainly not my friend Helen: successful, well-off, homeowner; but tired of her single life, of the near-constant awareness that she’s running out of time to have children, as fast as she’s running out of the energy to embark on another round of futile first dates. Nor my friend Mark, divorced dad, active in his daughter’s life - but who still, at the end of the weekend, returns the child to her mother, before driving back to his re-emptied house, where he spends the evenings with PlayStation and Sky Sports.

B.

In discussing solitary lives, we should ignore the Colm Toibins - financially independent people who realise that, for them, living alone brings more advantages than otherwise. Most people of my generation had such a stage in their lives - between university, and settling down. - but we didn’t want it to last forever. In any case, with property prices as they are, such self-selected solitude is not an option for much of the succeeding generation. Set aside, too, those figures pertaining to the very elderly; not because there aren’t real problems faced by those (usually female) ‘survivors’, but because their existence is a function of the uneven impact of medical advances and lifestyle changes on the longevity of each of the genders.

C.

It’s not the relatively young, or the very old, who are the main drivers of this demographic change. As the ONS makes clear, the largest increase in solitary living is down to the 45-64 age group. Almost two and a half million Britons in that age category have no one with whom to share their home, an increase of more than 800,000 households since the mid-Nineties. Even allowing for the increase in total population size, that’s still a noticeable change, and they don’t all enjoy the experience. I suspect there are more divorced parents, like my friend Mark, poking about their fridges for a pre-packed meal for one, than there are cloistered Irish novelists.

D.

This would all be fine, were this phenomenon merely to affect matters as concrete as housing. But evidence suggests a link between solitariness and poorer health outcomes (mirroring, bleakly, the evidence about the outcomes for children raised in single-parent households). One paper I read showed a significant increase in the prescription of antidepressants to the solitary, compared with cohabiting couples. Correlation doesn’t prove a sociological theory, of course, but it’s hard to ignore the link between living alone, and other detrimental life choices.

E.

The issue demands a political response: marriage is the most important institution to act as a bulwark against loneliness, and the British Government should promote it. Instead, the government is unwinding its insidious ‘couples penalty’: a financial punishment for initially setting up home with a partner, and then after divorce, (probably the result of the stress brought on by all the expense), a further charge for a change to living conditions. The Centre for Social Justice discovered that the people most penalised for living together are - surprise - among the poorest. This must be fixed. What's more, couples who arrange to ‘live apart together’ shouldn’t be demonised for rationally navigating the snares of the benefits system.

F.

But if we acknowledge that a financial penalty can cause the poorest to avoid marriage, why assume that monetary considerations don’t affect the better- off? First, because politicians are scared to reward marriage in the tax system, and second, because our divorce laws so scar those who endure them that, I suspect, we’ve produced a generation with the motto ‘once bitten, twice shy’. The changes to child benefit for the well-off hardly help either.

G.

Not very long ago, the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard deployed a powerful phrase in defense of his criminal justice policy: ‘prison works’. It’s time we used a similar phrase, in defense of social justice: marriage ‘works’ too. It works for most people and definitely for civic society, yet we find it hard to say this, and shy away from its political implications. What started as a desire not to judge ‘lifestyle choices’ has bred a generation living in lonely, quiet despair. Loneliness is a much harder political issue to tackle than, say, house-building, but - if we believe in society at all - hardly one of lesser significance. Question 28-34. The reading passage has seven paragraphs labelled A-G. Choose the correct heading for each from the list of headings below. Write the correct number i-x in boxes 28-34 on your answer sheet. List of headings i Middle age solitude is growing ii The institution of marriage needs a motto that resonates iii The young and the elderly are not relevant to the debate iv The system is clearly unfair v The real issue is a lack of affordable housing vi For many, the benefits of a single life are exaggerated vii The wealthy are affected by the same measures viii Most men would rather be single ix Loneliness has a range of consequences x Couples must work harder to make relationships work