2025 CSAT — Q14

Locate. This is a valid-assumption question, so find the premise the argument needs. The passage’s argument is that economic insecurity — not poverty — is the most acutely felt economic problem, and that policy targets it. For “insecurity beats poverty as the problem,” the author must be assuming insecurity reaches people above the poverty line, not just the poor. That is Statement I, and the text nearly states it: “even those just over the poverty line are subject to multiple economic insecurities.”

Test (the negation test). Negate I — suppose only the poor feel insecurity — and the claim that insecurity is a broader/bigger problem than poverty collapses (it would just be poverty by another name). So I is load-bearing: valid. Negate II — suppose eradicating poverty does not bring peace and social equality — and the passage’s argument is untouched; the passage never links poverty-eradication to equality, and indeed separates the two. II is not assumed.

Eliminate by anatomy. (b) and (c) admit II, which is both a claim the passage never actually makes and one that invents a cause the passage doesn’t state: it imports a poverty→equality causal promise the passage never makes and which cuts against the passage’s own poverty/insecurity distinction. (d) wrongly rejects I, the bridge that makes insecurity a wider problem than poverty. Key: (a).

Statement I: “Besides those below the official poverty line, even those just over the poverty line are subject to multiple economic insecurities of various kinds” — the argument that insecurity (not poverty) is the key problem relies on insecurity reaching beyond the poor, i.e. those above the line. Statement II: the passage never claims that eradicating poverty produces peace and social equality; it actually treats insecurity as distinct from and broader than poverty, so removing poverty would not by the passage’s own logic remove the insecurities — the claim is outside and contrary to the text.

Statement I. The passage argues insecurity is a bigger economic problem than poverty, supporting it by noting “even those just over the poverty line are subject to multiple economic insecurities.” For that argument to hold, the author assumes insecurity afflicts people above the poverty line too — otherwise insecurity would just coincide with poverty. Negate I and the “more than poverty” claim collapses. I is valid.

Statement II. “Eradication of poverty can result in peace and social equality” is found nowhere in the passage. The passage keeps insecurity distinct from poverty; on its own logic, removing poverty would not remove the insecurities (market, health, job) that reach above the line. Negating II leaves the argument intact. II is invalid.

Answer: (a) I only.

The hard move here is seeing that the passage’s whole point — insecurity exceeds poverty as the economic problem — requires insecurity to reach beyond the poor (I). Statement II is the world-plausible lure: poverty eradication sounds like it should bring equality, but the passage explicitly distinguishes insecurity from poverty, so on the text’s own logic II is neither stated nor needed. Read the assumption the argument cannot stand without, not the policy wish the topic evokes.