The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.

Sentence: Productivity gains, once expected to feed through to broader living standards, now primarily serve to enhance returns to wealth.
Paragraph: Economists now argue that inequality is no longer a by-product of growth but a condition of it. (1). Unlike wages, wealth reflects not just income but also access to assets, favourable institutional conditions—such as low interest rates—and public policies like low taxes and housing shortages. (2). In other words, wealth depends on political choices in ways that income currently does not. It’s not just the inequality itself that is the issue but the erosion of mechanisms that once constrained it. (3). Wealth and income inequality are linked, but where wages have stagnated and collective bargaining has weakened, capital income—derived from profits, rents and interest—has been boosted by design. (4).

Question

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Understanding central Asia’s role helps developments make more sense not only across Asia but in Europe, the Americas and Africa.
Paragraph: The nations of the Silk Roads are sometimes called ‘developing countries’, but they are actually some of the world’s most highly developed countries, the very crossroads of civilization, in advanced states of disrepair. ___(1)___. These countries lie at the centre of global affairs: they have since the beginning of history. Running across the spine of Asia, they form a web of connections fanning out in every direction, routes along which pilgrims and warriors, nomads and merchants have travelled, goods and produce have been bought and sold, and ideas exchanged, adapted and refined. ___(2)___ .They have carried not only prosperity, but also death and violence, disease and disaster. ___(3)___. The Silk Roads are the world’s central nervous system, connecting otherwise far-flung peoples and places…. ___(4)___. It allows us to see patterns and links, causes and effects that remain invisible if one looks only at Europe, or North America.

Answer 1

Approach: Match the time-frame. The given sentence has a distinctive 'once X, now Y' structure. Find the blank whose surrounding text also runs on that once-versus-now axis; that is where it belongs.

Read the sentence's clock: 'Productivity gains, once expected to feed through to broader living standards, now primarily serve to enhance returns to wealth' - past expectation defeated, present reality favouring wealth.

Audit each blank for the same clock: Around Blank 1 the discussion is definitional (inequality as a condition of growth) - no past/present pivot. Around Blank 2 the text lists what wealth depends on - static description, no time contrast. Around Blank 3 the sentence right before reads 'the erosion of mechanisms that once constrained it' (note the word 'once') and the sentence right after says capital income 'has been boosted by design' (the present outcome). This is precisely the once-then-now movement the insert carries. Around Blank 4 capital income has already been explained, so the insert would only repeat.

Blank 3 is the only spot whose neighbours share the once-to-now logic, so the productivity sentence slots there as the concrete example of the eroded mechanism.

Answer: Option 3.

Show Hint

The Correct Option is C

Solution and Explanation

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