The charts below give information about USA marriage and divorce rates between 1970 and 2000, and the marital status of adult Americans in two of the years.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
This essay question is from Cambridge IELTS 6 Test 4 Writing Task 1.
Number of marriages and divorces in the USA, 1970—2000
Marital status of adult Americans, 1970 and 2000
Sample Essay
The first chart shows the numbers of marriages and divorces in the USA between 1970 and 2000, while the second chart illustrates the marital status of adult Americans in 1970 and 2000.
Overall, while the number of marriages decreased over the 30 years, that of divorces remained relatively unchanged. In both 1970 and 2000, a significantly higher percentage of adults were married than otherwise.
There were 2.5 million marriages in 1970 and 1980. However, this dropped to 2 million in 2000. The number of divorces, in comparison, hovered between 1 and 1.5 million.
In both 1970 and 2000, most adults were married. They accounted for 70% of adult Americans in 1970, although this proportion declined to just under 60% in 2000. The proportion of never-married adults, on the other hand, increased from approximately 15% to 20%. Fewer than 5% of adults were divorced in 1970, but this rose sharply to nearly 10 percent in 2000. Those widowed represented about 5%-7% of adult Americans in both years.
