Main Idea of the Passage
From "The Persistence of Postwar Housing Patterns"
In the decades after the Second World War, federal lending policy reshaped where Americans lived. Mortgage insurance from the Federal Housing Administration, intended to expand homeownership, was directed disproportionately to new suburban construction and largely withheld from older urban neighborhoods. The result was a transfer of household wealth, over a generation, from cities to suburbs.
Subsequent reforms have softened these patterns but not erased them. Even where explicit lending discrimination was outlawed in the late 1960s, the geography it produced — concentrated investment in new developments, deferred maintenance in older ones — persisted because property values, school funding, and tax bases all reinforce the original pattern. A neighborhood that received a boost in 1955 was, on average, still receiving a smaller version of that boost in 1985.
The most recent generation of housing scholarship has emphasized the durability of these patterns over the intentions of any individual policy. A given mortgage program could be perfectly equitable in its present design and still channel resources along grooves cut by earlier programs. The question is no longer whether postwar policy mattered; it is what would be required to undo it.
Question
Answer choices
- mortgage discrimination ended in the late 1960s.
- suburbs grew faster than cities after World War II.
- postwar federal housing policy was deliberately discriminatory.
- the geographic patterns produced by postwar policy have persisted long after the policies themselves changed.
D Correct answer: D) the geographic patterns produced by postwar policy have persisted long after the policies themselves changed.
The passage's central argument, stated in the second and third paragraphs, is that the patterns set in motion by postwar policy have continued to shape outcomes even after the policies were reformed.
On the ACT, reading questions reward returning to the passage and verifying. The wrong answers are written to sound plausible from memory, but they distort one specific phrase from the passage. Re-reading the relevant lines is what catches the distortion.
Predicting an answer in your own words before looking at the choices, then matching the prediction to the closest option, is the single most reliable technique on ACT Reading. Choosing from the choices first lets the test's wrong-answer writers anchor your judgment.
The underlying rule
A "main idea" answer must capture the passage's overall argument, not a single supporting fact. True statements that are too narrow are wrong on main-idea questions.
Why each wrong answer is wrong
- A) mortgage discrimination ended in the late 1960s.: This option distorts a specific phrase from the passage or applies a true statement that does not actually answer the question being asked.
- B) suburbs grew faster than cities after World War II.: This option distorts a specific phrase from the passage or applies a true statement that does not actually answer the question being asked.
- C) postwar federal housing policy was deliberately discriminatory.: This option distorts a specific phrase from the passage or applies a true statement that does not actually answer the question being asked.
Study tip
Predict the main idea in your own words before reading the choices. Then eliminate any choice that is too narrow or too broad.
More Medium Social Science
- Main Idea of the PassageFrom "The Persistence of Postwar Housing Patterns" — Main Idea of the Passage
- Main Idea of the PassageFrom "The Persistence of Postwar Housing Patterns" — Main Idea of the Passage
- Main Idea of the PassageFrom "The Persistence of Postwar Housing Patterns" — Main Idea of the Passage
- Main Idea of the PassageFrom "The Persistence of Postwar Housing Patterns" — Main Idea of the Passage
- Main Idea of the PassageFrom "The Persistence of Postwar Housing Patterns" — Main Idea of the Passage