Q17 - A society's infant mortality rate

[csunnerberg13]

Trying to sharpen my strengthen/weaken skills, so here's how I worked through this question.

Premises: a society's infant mortality rate is an accepted indicator of that society's general health status + in U.S. overall, the rate of infant mortality is declining

Conclusion: This decline does not indicate that babies on the average are healthier at birth than they were in the past.

We want to strengthen this argument. I anticipated something about how babies at birth have some sort of health issue, even if they didn't die during the birth.

I worked wrong to right in the answer choices
(A) was a premise de-booster. We already are told that even though some areas rates are abnormally high, the average overall is still declining.

(B) we don't care what the causes of infant mortality are.

(C) says that the U.S. managed to save a lot of babies with new technology, but then those babies required more care after. It's not a perfect match for what I anticipated, but it's pretty good. Keep for now and try to eliminate some more answers.

(D) doesn't matter. It's still telling us more about the infant mortality rate - we want to hear about the babies after they're born.

(E) doesn't talk about the group we want it to. We don't know anything about how many babies receive adequate attention and we don't know how that relates to the baby's health - they gain weight slowly...so are they healthy or unhealthy? There's not enough of a connection here to choose it as the answer.

That leaves C - not perfect, but still works.

[ohthatpatrick]

Great explanation.

Although this is a Strengthen question, I hesitate to think of it as even having an argument core.

We're supposed to be supporting the claim that 'babies in the US are not necessarily healthier at birth now vs. the past'.

Was there already a premise given? No.

So, as you said, I'm just going to answers thinking, "Cool, tell me something that sounds like babies in the US aren't healthy at birth".

(A), (B), and (D) deal with infant mortality, which has nothing to do with the health of babies that ARE born.

(E) doesn't address the US, so this generalization may or may not apply to babies in the US.

Voila, (C).

Nice work.