In the United States, of the people who moved from one state to another when they retired, the percentage who...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
In the United States, of the people who moved from one state to another when they retired, the percentage who retired to Florida has decreased by three percentage points over the past ten years. Since many local businesses in Florida cater to retirees, this decline is likely to have a noticeably negative economic effect on these businesses.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| In the United States, of the people who moved from one state to another when they retired, the percentage who retired to Florida has decreased by three percentage points over the past ten years. |
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| Since many local businesses in Florida cater to retirees, this decline is likely to have a noticeably negative economic effect on these businesses. |
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Argument Flow:
"The argument moves from presenting a statistical trend (declining percentage of retirees choosing Florida) to predicting the economic consequences of this trend on Florida businesses that depend on retirees."
Main Conclusion:
"The decrease in Florida's share of interstate retirees will likely cause noticeable economic harm to local businesses that cater to retirees."
Logical Structure:
"The argument uses a cause-and-effect structure: it takes the premise that Florida's percentage of interstate retirees has declined, combines it with the background fact that many Florida businesses serve retirees, and concludes this decline will hurt those businesses economically."
Prethinking:
Question type:
Weaken - We need to find information that would make us less confident that Florida businesses catering to retirees will experience negative economic effects
Precision of Claims
The argument makes a quantity claim (3 percentage point decrease) and connects it to a predicted economic impact on businesses. The precision matters because we're dealing with percentages of people who moved between states, not absolute numbers
Strategy
To weaken this argument, we need to find scenarios where despite the 3 percentage point drop in Florida's share of interstate retirees, the businesses might not suffer economically. We can attack the connection between the statistical decline and the predicted business impact by showing that the actual number of retirees might not have decreased, or that other factors compensate for this decline
This tells us Florida still attracts more interstate retirees than any other state, but this doesn't address whether the absolute number going to Florida has decreased. We already know from the argument that Florida's percentage has dropped, so being 'most popular' doesn't weaken the concern about fewer customers for Florida businesses.
Information about people leaving Florida for employment is irrelevant to our argument about retirees moving TO Florida. We're focused on the retirement market, not the employment market, so this doesn't affect the predicted impact on businesses catering to retirees.
This compares tourist-focused businesses to retiree-focused businesses in Florida, but our argument is specifically about the negative impact on businesses that cater to retirees. The relative number of tourist businesses doesn't change whether retiree-focused businesses will suffer from fewer retiree customers.
This directly weakens the argument by showing that even though Florida's percentage of interstate retirees decreased, the absolute number of retirees coming to Florida could actually be higher than before. If the total pool of interstate retirees grew significantly (say, doubled), then a 3 percentage point drop could still mean more actual customers for Florida businesses, not fewer.
This discusses people leaving Florida upon retirement, which is about outflow from Florida rather than inflow to Florida. Our argument concerns the impact of decreased inflow of retirees on Florida businesses, so information about retirees leaving Florida doesn't address this concern.