[General] Please help me with the last sentence

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caronmi

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Please help me understand the last sentence. (The rest part of this article is just for your reference).


Low levels of literacy and numeracy have a damaging impact on almost every aspect of adult life, according to a survey published yesterday, which offers evidence of a developing underclass. Tests and interviews with hundreds of people born in a single week in 1958 clearly illustrated the handicap of educational underachievement. The effects were seen in unemployment, low incomes, depression and social inactivity.
  Those who left school at 16 with poor basic skills had been employed for up to four years less than good readers at the time they reached 37. Professor John Bynner, of City University, who carried out the research, said that today's unqualified people would face even greater problems because the supply of manual jobs had dried up. Poor readers were twice as likely to be on a low wage and four times as likely to live in a household where neither partner worked. Women in this position were five times as likely to be classified as depressed, while both sexes tended to feel they had no control over their lives, and to be doubtful of others. Those with low literacy and numeracy skills were seldom involved in any community organization and much less likely than others to have voted in a general election. There had been no improvement in the level of interviewees since the sample was surveyed at the age of 21.

I wonder "since" here means "from then on" or "because". And I don't understand why the author choose the age of 21 as a dividing line.

Thanks in advance.
 

susiedqq

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Yes, it is confusing. I think it means:

There had been no improvement (at age 21) in the level of interviewees (from the time) the sample was (first) surveyed .
 

caronmi

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Yes, it is confusing. I think it means:

There had been no improvement (at age 21) in the level of interviewees (from the time) the sample was (first) surveyed .

Are you saying that more tests had been conducted to other people at their 21 and the result turned out to be the same as the previous one they got?
 

freezeframe

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I'm having hard time understanding it.

I think it means that the level (but it's not clear of what -- level of literacy? qualify of life?) in the people interviewed today is no better than it was when the first study was done (I assume that this was done when the participants born in 1958 reached the age of 21; 21 is the age of majority in many places, so this could be why that age was chosen).
 

susiedqq

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Re-reading the paragraph, I now think that the original survey was taken at age 21 and then re-surveyed at age 37.
 
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