Question

阅读下面短文，简要回答问题。

　　The more money a married woman earns, the less housework she will do regardless of how much her spouse earns, according to a new study．

　　A researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that big paychecks(薪水)equal less cooking and cleaning in a study of 918 women in double-income families．Married women who made ＄40,000 or more a year spent nearly one hour less on housework per day than women who earned ＄10,000 or less, according to the findings based on data(数据)from the National Survey of Families and Households．

　　“Up to this point, people have thought that the important thing was how much money a woman makes compared to her husband, but the only thing that matters is how much money she earns,”Sanjiv Gupta, the author of the study, said in an interview．

　　The study, which is published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, showed that for every ＄7,500 in annual income that a married woman earned, she performed one hour less of housework each week．

　　Gupta confirmed the connection between money, housework and spousal relationships in a separate study using data on nearly 2,000 couples in the United States and Europe．

　　The average earnings of American women increased by ＄6,200 between 1965 and 1995, according to the U．S．Census Bureau(人口普查局)．During that time, the amount of time married women spent on weekly chores fell by 14.6 hours．

　　Since the husband's earnings had no effect on the amount of housework a woman does, the finding suggests that women are using their own money to reduce their housework by doing things such as ordering food from restaurants instead of cooking, and hiring cleaners instead of doing the cleaning themselves, Gupta said．

1．Find in the passage a word closest in meaning to the underlined word“spouse”．

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2．How do high income women reduce the amount of housework they do?(回答词数不超过8个)

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3．What is the main idea of the passage?(回答词数不超过10个)

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Answer 1

答案：
解析：

　　1．Husband．

　　2．They use their money to reduce housework．/They order food from restaurants and hire cleaners．

　　3．Having higher incomes/Big payback means less housework for married women．/The more married women earn, the less housework they do．