Band 6+: You should write at least 150 words. The bar charts below give information about women and births in Australia. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where necessary.

The bar charts below compare the age distribution of women giving birth to their first child in the years 2008 and 2018, and the number of children women aged from 40 to 44 years gave birth from 1989 until today.

Overall, women prefer to delay childbirth until they reach 30 years old, and the fertility rate decreased significantly in the last two years.

By far, in 1989, women at the age of 40-44 years old had an average of around 3.1 children. This number decreased dramatically each year to 2 children today. However, the second chart shows that even if women now have fewer children, they give birth at an older age then they used to.

In both years, the figure for females aged from 25 to 29 years was a dominant group. In 2008, around 24% of 25- 29 years old women gave birth to their first child, while 15% from the total number of mothers were females aged 30-34 years. In contrast, in 2018, trends has changed. A decline can be seen in the dominant group (to 22.5%), and a rise can be seen in the other group (to 7.5%).