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Excerpt from Fleshmarket Alley by Ian Rankin

(1) "I'm not supposed to be here," Detective Inspector John Rebus said. Not that anyone was listening.

(2) Knoxland was a housing scheme on the western edge of Edinburgh, off Rebus's patch. He was there because the West End guys were shorthanded. He was also there because his own bosses couldn't think what to do with him. It was a rainy Monday afternoon, and nothing about the day so far boded anything but ill for the rest of the working week. Rebus's old police station, his happy hunting ground these past eight or so years, had seen itself reorganized. As a result, it no longer boasted a CID office, meaning Rebus and his fellow detectives had been cast adrift, shipped out to other stations. He'd ended up at Gayfield Square, just off Leith Walk: a cushy number, according to some. Gayfield Square was on the periphery of the elegant New Town, behind whose eighteenth- and nineteenth-century facades anything could be happening without those outside being any the wiser. It certainly felt a long way from Knoxland, farther than the three factual miles. It was another culture, another country.

(4) Knoxland had been built in the 1960s, apparently from papier-mache and balsa wood. Walls so thin you could hear the neighbors cutting their toenails and smell their dinner on the stove. Patches of damp bloomed on its gray concrete walls. Graffiti had turned the place into "Hard Knox." Other embellishments warned the "Pakis" to "Get Out," while a scrawl that was probably only an hour or so old bore the legend "One Less." What shops there were had resorted to metal grilles on windows and doors, not even bothering to remove them during opening hours. The place itself was contained, hemmed in by divided highways to north and west. The bright- eyed developers had scooped out underpasses beneath the roads. Probably in their original drawings, these had been clean, well-lit spaces where neighbors would stop to chat about the weather and the new curtains in the window of number 42. In reality, they'd become no-go areas for everyone but the foolhardy and suicidal, even in daytime. Rebus was forever seeing reports of bag snatchings and muggings.

(5) It was probably those same bright-eyed developers who'd had the idea of naming the estate's various high- rise blocks after Scottish writers, and appending each with the word "House," serving merely to rub in that these were nothing like real houses.

(6) Barrie House. Stevenson House. Scott House. Burns House.

(7) Reaching skywards with all the subtlety of single-digit salutes. He looked around for somewhere to deposit his half-empty coffee cup. He'd stopped at a baker's on Gorgie Road, knowing that the farther from the city center he drove, the less likely he would be to find anything remotely drinkable. Not a good choice: the coffee had been scalding at first, quickly turning tepid, which only served to highlight its lack of anything resembling flavor. There were no bins nearby; no bins at all, in fact. The sidewalks and grass verges, however, were doing their best to oblige, so Rebus added his litter to the mosaic, then straightened up and pushed his hands deep into his coat pockets. He could see his breath in the air.

(8) "Papers are going to have a field day with this," someone was muttering. There were a dozen figures shuffling around in the covered walkway between two of the high-rise blocks. The place smelled faintly of urine, human or otherwise. Plenty of dogs in the vicinity, one or two even wearing collars. They would come sniffing at the entrance to the walkway, until chased off by one of the uniforms. Crime-scene tape now blocked both ends of the passage. Kids on bikes were craning their necks for a look. Police photographers were gathering evidence, vying for space with the forensic team. They were dressed in white overalls, heads covered. An anonymous gray van was parked alongside the police cars on the muddy play area outside. Its driver had complained to Rebus that some kids had demanded money from him to keep an eye on it.

(9) "Bloody sharks." Soon, this driver would take the body to the mortuary, where the post-mortem examination would take place. But already they knew they were dealing with homicide. Multiple stab wounds, including one to the throat. The trail of blood showed that the victim had been attacked ten or twelve feet farther into the passage. He'd probably tried to get away, crawling towards the light, his attacker making more lunges as he faltered and fell. "Nothing in the pockets except some loose change," another detective was saying. "Let's hope someone knows who he is..."

(10) Rebus didn't know who he was, but he knew what he was: he was a case, a statistic. More than that, he was a story, and even now the city's journalists would be scenting it, for all the world like a pack sensing its quarry. Knoxland was not a popular estate. It tended to attract only the desperate and those with no choice in the matter. In the past, it had been used as a dumping ground for tenants the council found hard to house elsewhere: addicts and the unhinged. More recently, immigrants had been catapulted into its dankest, least welcoming corners. Asylum seekers, refugees. People nobody really wanted to think about or have to deal with. Looking around, Rebus realized that the poor bastards must be left feeling like mice in a maze. The difference being that in laboratories, there were few predators, while out here in the real world, they were everywhere.

The passage states that the victim:

Excerpt from Fleshmarket Alley by Ian Rankin

(1) "I'm not supposed to be here," Detective Inspector John Rebus said. Not that anyone was listening.

(2) Knoxland was a housing scheme on the western edge of Edinburgh, off Rebus's patch. He was there because the West End guys were shorthanded. He was also there because his own bosses couldn't think what to do with him. It was a rainy Monday afternoon, and nothing about the day so far boded anything but ill for the rest of the working week. Rebus's old police station, his happy hunting ground these past eight or so years, had seen itself reorganized. As a result, it no longer boasted a CID office, meaning Rebus and his fellow detectives had been cast adrift, shipped out to other stations. He'd ended up at Gayfield Square, just off Leith Walk: a cushy number, according to some. Gayfield Square was on the periphery of the elegant New Town, behind whose eighteenth- and nineteenth-century facades anything could be happening without those outside being any the wiser. It certainly felt a long way from Knoxland, farther than the three factual miles. It was another culture, another country.

(4) Knoxland had been built in the 1960s, apparently from papier-mache and balsa wood. Walls so thin you could hear the neighbors cutting their toenails and smell their dinner on the stove. Patches of damp bloomed on its gray concrete walls. Graffiti had turned the place into "Hard Knox." Other embellishments warned the "Pakis" to "Get Out," while a scrawl that was probably only an hour or so old bore the legend "One Less." What shops there were had resorted to metal grilles on windows and doors, not even bothering to remove them during opening hours. The place itself was contained, hemmed in by divided highways to north and west. The bright- eyed developers had scooped out underpasses beneath the roads. Probably in their original drawings, these had been clean, well-lit spaces where neighbors would stop to chat about the weather and the new curtains in the window of number 42. In reality, they'd become no-go areas for everyone but the foolhardy and suicidal, even in daytime. Rebus was forever seeing reports of bag snatchings and muggings.

(5) It was probably those same bright-eyed developers who'd had the idea of naming the estate's various high- rise blocks after Scottish writers, and appending each with the word "House," serving merely to rub in that these were nothing like real houses.

(6) Barrie House. Stevenson House. Scott House. Burns House.

(7) Reaching skywards with all the subtlety of single-digit salutes. He looked around for somewhere to deposit his half-empty coffee cup. He'd stopped at a baker's on Gorgie Road, knowing that the farther from the city center he drove, the less likely he would be to find anything remotely drinkable. Not a good choice: the coffee had been scalding at first, quickly turning tepid, which only served to highlight its lack of anything resembling flavor. There were no bins nearby; no bins at all, in fact. The sidewalks and grass verges, however, were doing their best to oblige, so Rebus added his litter to the mosaic, then straightened up and pushed his hands deep into his coat pockets. He could see his breath in the air.

(8) "Papers are going to have a field day with this," someone was muttering. There were a dozen figures shuffling around in the covered walkway between two of the high-rise blocks. The place smelled faintly of urine, human or otherwise. Plenty of dogs in the vicinity, one or two even wearing collars. They would come sniffing at the entrance to the walkway, until chased off by one of the uniforms. Crime-scene tape now blocked both ends of the passage. Kids on bikes were craning their necks for a look. Police photographers were gathering evidence, vying for space with the forensic team. They were dressed in white overalls, heads covered. An anonymous gray van was parked alongside the police cars on the muddy play area outside. Its driver had complained to Rebus that some kids had demanded money from him to keep an eye on it.

(9) "Bloody sharks." Soon, this driver would take the body to the mortuary, where the post-mortem examination would take place. But already they knew they were dealing with homicide. Multiple stab wounds, including one to the throat. The trail of blood showed that the victim had been attacked ten or twelve feet farther into the passage. He'd probably tried to get away, crawling towards the light, his attacker making more lunges as he faltered and fell. "Nothing in the pockets except some loose change," another detective was saying. "Let's hope someone knows who he is..."

(10) Rebus didn't know who he was, but he knew what he was: he was a case, a statistic. More than that, he was a story, and even now the city's journalists would be scenting it, for all the world like a pack sensing its quarry. Knoxland was not a popular estate. It tended to attract only the desperate and those with no choice in the matter. In the past, it had been used as a dumping ground for tenants the council found hard to house elsewhere: addicts and the unhinged. More recently, immigrants had been catapulted into its dankest, least welcoming corners. Asylum seekers, refugees. People nobody really wanted to think about or have to deal with. Looking around, Rebus realized that the poor bastards must be left feeling like mice in a maze. The difference being that in laboratories, there were few predators, while out here in the real world, they were everywhere.

Which of the following details is used in the passage to describe the emotional indifference of Rebus and the other detectives upon seeing the body?

Excerpt from Fleshmarket Alley by Ian Rankin

(1) "I'm not supposed to be here," Detective Inspector John Rebus said. Not that anyone was listening.

(2) Knoxland was a housing scheme on the western edge of Edinburgh, off Rebus's patch. He was there because the West End guys were shorthanded. He was also there because his own bosses couldn't think what to do with him. It was a rainy Monday afternoon, and nothing about the day so far boded anything but ill for the rest of the working week. Rebus's old police station, his happy hunting ground these past eight or so years, had seen itself reorganized. As a result, it no longer boasted a CID office, meaning Rebus and his fellow detectives had been cast adrift, shipped out to other stations. He'd ended up at Gayfield Square, just off Leith Walk: a cushy number, according to some. Gayfield Square was on the periphery of the elegant New Town, behind whose eighteenth- and nineteenth-century facades anything could be happening without those outside being any the wiser. It certainly felt a long way from Knoxland, farther than the three factual miles. It was another culture, another country.

(4) Knoxland had been built in the 1960s, apparently from papier-mache and balsa wood. Walls so thin you could hear the neighbors cutting their toenails and smell their dinner on the stove. Patches of damp bloomed on its gray concrete walls. Graffiti had turned the place into "Hard Knox." Other embellishments warned the "Pakis" to "Get Out," while a scrawl that was probably only an hour or so old bore the legend "One Less." What shops there were had resorted to metal grilles on windows and doors, not even bothering to remove them during opening hours. The place itself was contained, hemmed in by divided highways to north and west. The bright- eyed developers had scooped out underpasses beneath the roads. Probably in their original drawings, these had been clean, well-lit spaces where neighbors would stop to chat about the weather and the new curtains in the window of number 42. In reality, they'd become no-go areas for everyone but the foolhardy and suicidal, even in daytime. Rebus was forever seeing reports of bag snatchings and muggings.

(5) It was probably those same bright-eyed developers who'd had the idea of naming the estate's various high- rise blocks after Scottish writers, and appending each with the word "House," serving merely to rub in that these were nothing like real houses.

(6) Barrie House. Stevenson House. Scott House. Burns House.

(7) Reaching skywards with all the subtlety of single-digit salutes. He looked around for somewhere to deposit his half-empty coffee cup. He'd stopped at a baker's on Gorgie Road, knowing that the farther from the city center he drove, the less likely he would be to find anything remotely drinkable. Not a good choice: the coffee had been scalding at first, quickly turning tepid, which only served to highlight its lack of anything resembling flavor. There were no bins nearby; no bins at all, in fact. The sidewalks and grass verges, however, were doing their best to oblige, so Rebus added his litter to the mosaic, then straightened up and pushed his hands deep into his coat pockets. He could see his breath in the air.

(8) "Papers are going to have a field day with this," someone was muttering. There were a dozen figures shuffling around in the covered walkway between two of the high-rise blocks. The place smelled faintly of urine, human or otherwise. Plenty of dogs in the vicinity, one or two even wearing collars. They would come sniffing at the entrance to the walkway, until chased off by one of the uniforms. Crime-scene tape now blocked both ends of the passage. Kids on bikes were craning their necks for a look. Police photographers were gathering evidence, vying for space with the forensic team. They were dressed in white overalls, heads covered. An anonymous gray van was parked alongside the police cars on the muddy play area outside. Its driver had complained to Rebus that some kids had demanded money from him to keep an eye on it.

(9) "Bloody sharks." Soon, this driver would take the body to the mortuary, where the post-mortem examination would take place. But already they knew they were dealing with homicide. Multiple stab wounds, including one to the throat. The trail of blood showed that the victim had been attacked ten or twelve feet farther into the passage. He'd probably tried to get away, crawling towards the light, his attacker making more lunges as he faltered and fell. "Nothing in the pockets except some loose change," another detective was saying. "Let's hope someone knows who he is..."

(10) Rebus didn't know who he was, but he knew what he was: he was a case, a statistic. More than that, he was a story, and even now the city's journalists would be scenting it, for all the world like a pack sensing its quarry. Knoxland was not a popular estate. It tended to attract only the desperate and those with no choice in the matter. In the past, it had been used as a dumping ground for tenants the council found hard to house elsewhere: addicts and the unhinged. More recently, immigrants had been catapulted into its dankest, least welcoming corners. Asylum seekers, refugees. People nobody really wanted to think about or have to deal with. Looking around, Rebus realized that the poor bastards must be left feeling like mice in a maze. The difference being that in laboratories, there were few predators, while out here in the real world, they were everywhere.

The passage most strongly suggests that the victim's killer:

Why Has Single Motherhood Increased?

(1) Changes in children's living arrangements result from long-standing trends in marriage, divorce, and fertility. Divorce rates in the United States have been going up since the turn of the century and have recently stabilized at very high levels. Out-of-wedlock birth rates have been going up gradually since at least the early 1940s. After 1960, the age of women at their first marriages began to rise, increasing the proportion of young women who might become unwed mothers. Together, these forces have fueled the growth of single parenthood during the postwar period.

(2) These trends exist in all western, industrialized countries. Divorce rates more than doubled in most countries between 1960 and 1990; in some they increased fourfold. Single parenthood also increased in nearly all western countries between 1970 and the late 1980s. Yet the U.S. has the highest prevalence of single- parent families, and it has experienced the largest increase between 1970 and 1990.

(3) In the view of conservatives, welfare benefits in the United States have reduced the costs of single motherhood and discouraged young men and women from marrying. In some parts of the country, welfare may provide poor women with more economic security than marriage does. However, for three reasons, the argument that welfare caused the growth in single-parent families does not withstand scrutiny.

(4) The trend in welfare benefits between 1960 and 1990 does not match the trend in single motherhood. Welfare and single motherhood both increased dramatically during the 1960s and early 1970s. After 1974, however, welfare benefits declined, but single motherhood continued to rise. The real value of the welfare benefit package (cash assistance plus food stamps) for a family of four with no other income fell from $10,133 in 1972 to $8,374 in 1980 and to $7,657 in 1992, a loss of 26 percent between 1972 and 1992 (in 1992 dollars).

(5) Increases in welfare cannot explain why single motherhood grew among more advantaged women. Since 1960, divorce and single parenthood have grown among women with a college education, who are not likely to be motivated by the promise of a welfare check.

(6) Welfare payments cannot explain why single motherhood is more common in the United States than in other industrialized countries. Nearly all the Western European countries have much more generous payments for single mothers than the U.S., yet the prevalence of single motherhood is lower in these countries. One way to compare the "costs" of single motherhood in different countries is to compare the poverty rates of single mothers with those of married mothers. While single mothers have higher poverty rates than married mothers in all industrialized countries, they are worst off in the United States.

(7) If welfare is not to blame, what is? Three factors seem to be primarily responsible.

(8) The first is the growing economic independence of women. Women who can support themselves outside marriage can be picky about when and whom they marry. They can leave bad marriages and they can afford to bear and raise children on their own. Thus, single mothers will be more common in a society where women are more economically independent, all else being equal.

(9) American women have moved steadily toward economic independence throughout this century thanks to increased hourly wages, greater control over child-bearing, and technological advances that reduce time required for housework. Since the turn of the century, each new generation of young women has entered the labor force in greater proportions and stayed at work longer. By 1970, over half of all American women were employed or looking for work; by 1990, nearly three quarters were doing so. The rise in welfare benefits during the 1950s and 1960s may have made poor women less dependent on men by providing them with an alternative source of economic support. However, welfare was only a small part of a much larger change that was enabling all women, rich and poor alike, to live more easily without a husband.

(10) A second factor in the growth of single motherhood is the decline in men's earning power relative to women's. After World War II and up through the early 1970s, both men and women benefitted from a strong economy. While women were becoming more self-sufficient during the 1950s and 1960s, men's wages and employment opportunities were increasing as well. Consequently, while more women could afford to live alone, the economic payoff from marriage continued to rise. After 1970, however, the gender gap in earnings (women's earnings divided by men's earnings) began to narrow. In 1970, female workers earned 59 percent as much as male workers; by 1980, they earned 65 percent as much and by 1990 74 percent. (These numbers, which come from a study by Suzanne Bianchi to be published by the Russell Sage Foundation, are based on full-time workers between the ages of 25 and 34.) In just two short decades, the economic payoff from marriage had declined by 15 percentage points. Such reductions are likely to increase single motherhood.

(11) The narrowing of the wage gap occurred among adults from all social strata, but the source of the narrowing varied. Among those with a college education, men were doing well, but women were doing even better. Between 1980 and 1990, the earnings of college-educated women grew by 17 percent, while the earnings of college-educated men grew by only 5 percent. (Again, I am referring to full-time workers, aged 25 to
34). Thus, even though the benefits of marriage were declining, women still had much to gain from pooling resources with a man.

According to the passage, what do U.S. conservatives blame for the rise in single motherhood?