LR Question 18 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: A person is more likely to become…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
ARGUMENT: The older a person, the more likely they are to be disabled. In East Wendell fewer old people get disability benefits compared to younger people. The explanation is that the percentage of jobs offering a disability benefit has increased recently.
ANALYSIS: There isn’t really any reasoning given in favor of the solution. On these sorts of questions we simply have to look for an alternate explanation to explain the facts.
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- This is sort of vague. How long ago did this improvement start? How big is the impact: are the people still disabled? Does it change overall population disability rates? Without more precise info we can’t use this to weaken or strengthen the argument. It’s useless.
- This is also very vague. Some could be 1-3% of people. We need detail to weaken an argument.
- Great! When did this happen? How much longer do we live? Does it affect disability rates? This doesn’t let us do anything.
- This tells us how much money people get. We’re interested in the percentage of people receiving money.
- CORRECT. This is a strong alternate explanation. Most disability plans simply stop at age 65. That explains why fewer people in the older age groups have disability plans.
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I had a weird problem with this question: the question stem didn’t make sense. Why would the given explanation serve to explain the phenomenon of shrinking disability benefit payments? Because younger people are more likely to be the ones working at those new jobs that have disability benefits? That did not seem at all obvious to me. Just because the number of jobs offering benefits increases, why does that mean the benefits are under-allocated to older people?
(By the way, if you don’t accept questions as comments on these posts, let me know – I can send them in some other way or ask someone else.)