1 . The three phases of life are increasingly a thing of the past. Where once working lives fitted neatly into the model of education, employment and then retirement, the simplicity of that division is being challenged by changing standards of the workforce.
Increasing numbers of workers, nearing their long-imagined transition into retirement, seem to be actively postponing the moment at which they down tools. Newly released figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have shown that there are over a million more over 50s in part-time work than a decade ago. And with nine out of 10 employers reporting difficulties hiring workers, there’s likely to be a growing market for their talents as bosses extend their searches to older people, including those who are willing to take on part-time responsibilities.
The ending of the three phases of working life isn’t simply down to people living longer or financial necessity － though those are certainly important factors － but also to an increasing desire to maintain a purposeful life. One survey of British retirees over 50 found that 85 per cent of them felt they’d retired too young – stopping working had left a void that they subsequently regretted.
The 2015 film The Intern conveyed this human need to have value. In it, Robert De Niro plays a 70-year-old widower who finds himself a fish out of water when he joins a trendy internet start-up. In the end, not only does he find the sense of belonging that he craves but his colleagues come to rely on his experience and different perspective. It’s a plot we can increasingly expect to play out in real-life offices over the decades to come as people live ever longer.
Already, we are seeing people in their 50s and 60s looking ahead to a retirement lasting 30 years, choosing instead to build second careers that they can maintain into their 70s or beyond. Freed from the financial burden of young children, they can prioritise flexibility, shorter working hours or more rewarding jobs in areas such as charity work or teaching. Many do it for no money at all, volunteering behind the till in charity shops or showing people round National Trust properties.
However, it’s the next generation where the effect of living longer will really be felt, and the financial necessity will start to bite. In the West, more than half of the children born in 2016 have a life expectancy of more than 100 years. In their book, The 100-Year Life, London Business School professors Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott suggest that acquiring sufficient funds to see oneself through a 40- or 50-year retirement will likely be beyond all but the highest earners.
Then there’s the often repeated claim that young people today are the first generation to be poorer than their parents. Certainly property prices are changing the way they plan for the future. In the mid-Nineties, the average home cost less than three times the average wage; last year, ONS stats placed that ratio at eight times wages.
The overall effect of these trends is that young people recognize that they will likely have to postpone dreams of retirement and instead strap on(绑住) more debt spread over longer spans. It’s why 44 per cent of under 30s say they expect to be working well into their 70s and why data this year from the Bank of England show that 16 per cent of UK mortgages(按揭贷款) now have terms of 35 years or more – a figure that has tripled in the past decade.
All of these factors look set to contribute to a workforce that has a significantly wider range of ages in the future. In an era of work when we’ve all learned to be more inclusive, only eight per cent of firms with a diversity programme have adapted it to go beyond gender, race and sexuality and into age. Incorporating older employees into the workforce is set to be the next big thing at the office.
If Robert De Niro has anything to teach us, it’s that this can be an enormous force for good for both employees and businesses.
1. What do the underlined words “down tools” in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．stop working | B．undertake part-time jobs |
| C．learn a new skill | D．imagine the future life |
| A．a longer life | B．financial needs |
| C．a meaningful life | D．delayed retirement policy |
| A．tell us Robert De Niro is a helpful retiree |
| B．indicate that retirees can also benefit society |
| C．illustrate that retirees desire to live meaningfully |
| D．share Robert De Niro’s second career with us |
| A．Their life expectancy will be longer. |
| B．They will be richer than their parents. |
| C．They can live within their means. |
| D．They will fail to pay off their mortgage. |
| A．longing for a more purposeful life |
| B．inability to make their ends meet |
| C．a shorter term of mortgages |
| D．eagerness for experience from old employees |
| A．Different attitudes to retirement between the young and old. |
| B．Financial issues facing both old people and young people. |
| C．Age being no bar in the modern world of work. |
| D．The new standards of the workplace. |
2 . Those extra pounds should be avoided at all costs, right? Actually, while being overweight isn’t generally good for our health, not all fat is created equal — some may even be beneficial.
There are two major kinds of body fat. White fat, the most abundant type, is what you feel when you squeeze your midsection. Brown fat, found mainly in the neck region, burns energy rather than storing it the way white fat does. Brown fat may also help avoid diabetes. According to a study in Cell Metabolism, individuals with higher amounts of brown fat had smaller changes in blood sugar and thus a reduced risk of developing diabetes. Infants have high levels of brown fat, which helps regulate their body temperature. Sadly, we lose it as we age, and adults have only small amounts.
Adults can increase brown fat by exposing themselves to cold temperatures. In a recent study, people who slept in a mildly cold room (about 66 degrees F) increased the amount and activity of their brown fat by up to 40 percent. Sleeping in mild warmth (81 degrees F), however, decreased their amount of brown fat. Cold showers don’t seem to affect it.
Brown fat does have its drawbacks. Radiologists don’t like it, because the heat it causes makes it harder for body scans to detect activities in patients. Although there’s no firm evidence that any specific foods or nutrients can activate brown fat, radiologists routinely recommend that patients eat a high-fat, low-carb diet before scans on the grounds that this reduces brown fat activation.
Just as brown fat isn’t perfect, neither is white fat all bad. Even though people tend to hate it, white fat delivers important health benefits. It protects our vital organs, helps keep us warm, and stores calories for later use, keeping us from starving when food is scarce.
White fat can sometimes be turned into brown — it’s then called beige or brite (“brown in white”) fat. Like brown fat, beige fat burns energy and can thus help fight against obesity. Scientists are still trying to figure out how the change happens; one study points to a hormone called irisin, which our muscles produce when we exercise.
Fat cells’ sensitivity to temperature changes means there’s more than one way we can get rid of unwanted fat. Cooling treatments, for instance, freeze fat cells to death. The body removes these damaged cells over several months.
1. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “midsection” in the second paragraph?| A．Leg. | B．Arm. | C．Wrist. | D．Waist. |
| A．Babies. | B．Senior people. | C．Fat people. | D．Thin people. |
| A．Beige fat. | B．Brite fat. | C．White fat. | D．Brown fat. |
