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Question

Difficulty: Very hardDrawing Logical Inferences from Passage Premises

Passage:
In early modern Europe, municipal grain reserves were maintained primarily to cushion urban populations against sudden harvest failures. Historical demographic analyses reveal that during the mid-seventeenth-century agrarian crises, towns with public granaries experienced lower mortality spikes than surrounding rural hinterlands. However, parish records indicate that these granaries were financed via regressive head taxes levied exclusively on suburban agrarian tenants rather than urban merchants. Consequently, during multi-year droughts, although urban death rates stabilized, the surrounding rural tenant population suffered disproportionately severe mortality spikes due to depleted financial capital, preventing them from purchasing grain sold at market prices.

Statement: Based on the passage premises, the structural financing of municipal grain reserves contributed indirectly to higher mortality rates among rural agrarian tenants during extended droughts.

Answer: Answer

Answer

True. The passage establishes a strict logical chain showing that the tax system funding municipal grain reserves depleted rural tenants' savings, directly impairing their ability to buy food during multi-year droughts and elevating their mortality rates.
The statement is correct because combining the passage premises demonstrates a clear indirect causal chain: funding urban grain reserves via regressive taxes on agrarian tenants depleted their financial resources, rendering them unable to buy grain during extended droughts and consequently driving up their mortality rates.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the premise establishing how municipal granaries were funded.
The granaries were funded through regressive head taxes imposed exclusively on suburban agrarian tenants.
Determining the economic burden of the reserve system is necessary to evaluate its downstream consequences.
2
Trace the impact of this funding mechanism on rural tenants during multi-year droughts.
The taxes depleted tenants' financial capital, leaving them unable to afford grain at market prices and resulting in high mortality spikes.
Connecting the tax mechanism to capital depletion explains why rural mortality increased during droughts.
3
Evaluate whether the statement logically follows from these synthesized premises.
Because the reserve financing system directly reduced tenants' capacity to survive extended droughts, it indirectly contributed to their higher mortality rates.
Confirming that the conclusion is fully supported by the text without requiring external assumptions.

Key Concept

Synthesizing multi-sentence premises to infer unstated causal relationships.
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Drawing Logical Inferences from Passage Premises