Question: 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.

The bar charts show the number of marriages and divorces in the USA from 1970 to 2000, and the marital status of adult US citizens in the years 1970 and 2000. Overall, although the figure for marriages declined steadily over the thirty-year period, it remained higher than that for divorces, which fluctuated a lot. It can also be seen that the quantity of married people in both 1970 and 2000 was superior to that of those who were never married, widowed, or divorced.

To begin with, there were more marriages than divorces in 1970 at 2.5 millions and 1 million respectively. After ten years, the marriage rate remained stable, while the divorce numbers had increased slightly to about 1.4 millions. However, the figures for both marriage and divorce categories fell steadily throughout the next 20 years, decreasing to 2 million marriages and 1 million divorces in 2000.

In addition, the percentage of married couples in the USA in 1970 was 70% compared to around 15% for those never married and less than 10% percent for either widowed or divorced ones. On the other hand, the year 2000 saw a small decrease in the number of married people with just a tad below 60%; however, it was still the highest percentage of all compared.  In contrast, there was a slight increase of 10% in the figures of those never married. Lastly, the number of widowed people decreased to marginally 5% in 2000, while the number of divorced couples went up slightly to almost 10% that same year.